


Inopportune Moments

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Also a lot of Phasma, I asked Hux if it was OK to just leave him in that AT AT for 3 days and he said it was, M/M, My powerful space bro Phasma, She doesn't get a romance arc but she's very much there doing Phasma things, To be fair it's really loud in an AT AT, also abusive relationship tw, and hux suffering, but mostly it's character and world building, i think, implied use of Outlook Express, screwed up dysfunctional kylux, there's some sex sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-09 07:22:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 22,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5530853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They work. They train. They fight. They cope. They're the closest thing he has to a family on this miserable, exhausting ball of ice, and Kylo Ren is going to ruin this for him too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Freighter, Delayed

“Sir, that was not a--”

  
“Well, I'm afraid that you'll have to explain to your staff that you have new priorities.” Hux's weight shifted to his toes; his eyebrows rose just enough to make Colonel Tapikk's spine curl inward. He could see the effort she put into meeting his eyes long enough to salute, to say 'Yes, Sir,' and to turn on her heels and walk away.

  
Hux ran the tip of his tongue along the bottom edge of his teeth. An entire freighter, delayed for a week – recovering from this was far more than a matter of shuffling around a handful of task teams. He could run the figures in his head all he liked, but no matter how he ground his jaw or popped his knuckles, he was going to have to look at a calendar for this.

  
“Lieutenant Vrass!” he snapped as he strode to his console. “Bring me some coffee.”

  
Even as the thin old man replied and made his way to the R-24 Commissary Droid, Hux could hear the footsteps over the hum of the command center's doors.

  
It was poor posture that made the creature's gait so distinctive—undermuscled chest sucked in, scuffed toes pointed inward, pelvis tipped forward like a woman's. Hux's face curdled reflexively at the sound of his feet shuffling across the floor like a limping beggar's in an alleyway.

  
He ignored him as he sat down, inclined one widened eyeball at his console's retinal scanner.

  
“Good afternoon, General Hux,” said the console as its screens and keyboards came glittering to life in front of him. “You have three hundred eighty-five new messages since your last login.”

  
“Filter by rank of sender,” Hux replied, reaching up to the calendar icon and opening the holoface with a flick of his wrist. “Flag all incoming messages sent by Colonel Tappik and Colonel Jallan.”

  
“I am processing your--”

  
“Silent.” Hux could feel his upper lip creasing as he scrolled through the coming months in grid view. The freighter's delay – a radiation storm, a damaged motivator, an incompetent ship's engineer –had been like a chip in a landspeeder's forward window. A cheap repair, neglected only an hour too long, had--

  
“We have a droid that makes coffee, General.”

  
Everything was a quiet, rapid-fire remark with him. He was standing directly behind Hux's chair, so close that he could hear him breathe much too hard for a supposed highly-trained warrior.

  
“Do you have something you need to tell me, Lord Ren?” said Hux. “I'm afraid I'm very--”

  
“I've just received information from our agent on Nabath,” he replied. “The map to Skywalker has come into the possession of a—”

  
“And you're about to bring it into our possession.” Hux reached up to the delivery schedule for Precinct 8, walked his fingers through the holoface to scroll it down until he saw the Clarity's arrival scheduled for a disgustingly optimistic date. “For which I thank you in advance, My Lord, as I wish you and Captain Phasma the best of luck in your latest attempt at retrieval.”

  
He ignored the way his heartbeat quickened as menu link after menu link cascaded open at his fingertips. Was there a precinct of this planet whose construction was not somehow dependent on the Clarity showing up on time?

  
They said that Darth Vader's presence had always been heralded by the rhythmic crackle of his respirator, which operated independently of whatever passions ran through his mind. Kylo Ren's voice scrambler did him no such favors. Anyone standing nearby could hear the sound of him sucking in a deep, sudden breath. Major Yang stepped suddenly away from the central command console.

  
“Luck has not compensated for unseasoned troopers on our last four attempts,” Lord Ren replied. “I am here to ask you to reconsider--”

  
“Absolutely not, My Lord.” Hux did not take his eyes off the troop assignment schedule for Section 237. “Messaging – compose mass alert to Precinct 8 mailing list alpha.”

 

“Message addressed, General Hux,” replied the console. “You may speak when ready.”

  
“Attention Comand Staff,” Hux said, leaning in toward the microphone on the console desk. “Due to an unforeseen delay in the arrival of the F.O.S. Clarity, shipments of H4 alusteel rods, B86 alusteel bars, and HK activator joists are expected to be postponed for a ten cycle period. Stand by for rescheduling. End Message. Official Signature.” He sat up straight again and reached over to the delivery schedules for the adjacent precincts.

  
“Message sent, General Hux.”

  
“You cannot win this fight from behind your desk.” He was leaning over him now – no, looming over him, close enough that Hux could feel his sour breath being directed down the back of his neck.

  
“No,” he replied. “I assume that if you and Phasma can't win it with three carriers full of troops--”

  
“Supply us with three carriers of well-trained troops and I will show you what we can do with this fight,” said Lord Ren. “Your troopers--”

  
“My Lord, this is neither the time nor the place for this conversation – scheduling, show me the overlay display of delivery schedules for precincts three through twelve.” He spread his hands in the holoface above him to shift the flat screen into a curved display that enveloped him and the hissing mess behind him.

  
“The map will be gone by the time--”

  
“Then I suggest that you take the carriers of troops that Lord Snoke has provided for us and get the map before it disappears again.” Hux ran the tip of his tongue along the edge of his teeth firmly enough that it pained him. “My Lord.”

  
“Phasma will not be pleased by this, General.”

  
“Phasma doesn't need to be pleased,” Hux replied, flicking through Precinct 5's commander list. “She needs to do her job.” He did not have time to remind Lord Ren of who else needed to do their job before the Resistance embarrassed them any further.

  
Another sharp hiss betrayed a tantrum brewing beneath the mask. “I will pass that on to her,” said Lord Ren.

  
A bitter smile crawled across Hux's face as the creature whirled around and stalked out of the command center. “Please do,” he said, raising his voice just loud enough that Lord Ren could hear him. “I always look forward to hearing her input.”


	2. Severe Discomfort

During the last set, his chest began to shake beneath the bar. He kept silent as he heaved two hundred twenty pounds off his body, then breathed, then lowered two hundred twenty pounds back onto his body, then repeated the process. Three times, then four, then five, then six.

  
Other people rested on the bench after three sets of ten, made small talk instead of training. General Hux and Captain Phasma switched positions without speaking or making eye contact.

  
She got set up faster than Hux did, took shorter breaks between the sets with her eyes shut and her thin lips pressed together. She did not want to be here. This gymnasium was for the use of people Phasma referred to as ‘faces.’ It was not Phasma’s job, she had explained on her first day of duty, to interact with faces. It was Phasma’s job, she had explained on her first day of duty, to command storm troopers. Doing Phasma’s job, she had explained on her first day of duty, involved working and training with the storm troopers she commanded.

  
Hux wasn’t sure how well he had explained to her that she was now also in command of a significant number of the faces she spoke of with such contempt.

  
A pair of young artillery officers were watching them from the barbell rack across the chilly hall that smelled of antiseptic and echoed with the indignity of human exertion. Hux glared at the girls, kept his eyes on Phasma’s ghostly white legs while she panted on the bench.

  
“Number three,” she said.

  
“Got it.” Hux looked down at Phasma’s broad, flat chest while she grunted and grimaced beneath the weight on the barbell. He always wondered if this was really how much she bench pressed, or if she bench pressed however much her strongest co-commander bench pressed.

  
Either way, she took as little time as she could to get herself out of the weight room and running ahead of Hux in the corridor.

  
If Phasma matched him beneath the bar, she plainly outclassed him on the track. Her long legs alone could not account for her speed and stamina – she was somehow just good at running the way Hux was good at project management and Kylo Ren was good at fucking up the First Order’s plans. She led their little group of senior officers in a painful chase down three miles of corridors, her short blonde hair bouncing with every stride. Only droids could see them down here, hustling down the hallway red in the face, dressed in marching boots and loose shorts and plain black undershirts.

  
Something about being on a planet had made this part of the morning excruciating for Hux. For the first mile, he was out of breath; his shins hurt, and his feet felt like lead. For the second mile, he felt exhaustion seize every limb. By the third mile, a horrible pain had seized his entire right side. He did not clutch at himself, but he knew he was leaning when he saw a horribly familiar shadow in the hallway.

  
“General Hux.”

  
He could have run past him. He should have stood up straight and run right past him. Instead, he slowed to a halt, panting, his hands held over his head like he’d just been taken prisoner.

  
“What is it, Ren?” he said, glaring at the masked creature in the low light.

  
“You are in pain.”

  
“Thank you, Ren,” said Hux. “Can you tell me why you’ve come to interrupt my officers’ training?”

  
“Our spies have reported in from Jaggar,” said Ren. “They have confirmed the identity of the Republic’s contact as a former staffer of Princess Leia, one Deja Navagish.”

  
Hux nodded, crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Does Snoke know of this?” he said.

  
“You wish to bring him the news alongside me.” The eye slit of the mask was level, inclined toward Hux. Even stooped, he was the taller of the two men.

  
“I wish to have you stop pretending to use Jedi mind tricks on me,” Hux snapped. “Now, if you’ll excuse me–”

  
“You hate running,” said Kylo Ren. “And you’ll never catch up to Phasma.”

  
“I don’t intend to discuss physical training with a man who uses magic to defeat his enemies,” Hux replied. “Meet me in the antechamber at 0900 hours.”

  
“You are in pain,” Ren observed.

  
“I’m not in pain,” said Hux.

  
“No?” The angle of the eye slit changed.

  
“Pain is–” Hux ran a hand back over his hair. “My father was once shot in the side, Lord Ren,” he said. “He made his way eight miles from a crash site with nothing but his blaster and a canteen. He had to compress his own wound with a belt and a pair of socks.”

  
“But you have not been shot,” said Lord Ren. The eye slit went horizontal again. “You’ve never been in battle.”

  
“I have no need of charging in to a slaughter with my blaster on high,” said Hux. He smiled up at the mask. “All I have to do to end a million lives is submit blueprints and a budget.”

  
“Truly, a master of warfare.” Ren’s voice filter made it impossible to detect any sarcasm in his voice.

  
Hux looked the taller man up and down, conscious that his ears were starting to turn red. He knew why Ren had found him down here in training slacks, pursuing his least favorite activity in the galaxy with his closest staff around him. He wasn’t going to say anything, but he knew.

  
“As I said, Lord Ren,” Hux said. “Meet me in the antechamber at 0900 hours. I have a few things to attend to before we bring the good news to Lord Snoke.”

****

Lieutenant-Colonel Chata had once said that she felt six inches taller and twice as pretty when she was wearing her long dress blacks. Hux was not one to be so exuberant about things like clothing, but he had to admit he understood her sentiment to a certain degree. He certainly felt a little less ridiculous walking beside Kylo Ren when he had his tall boots on and his hair combed back.

  
“This bodes well for Starkiller Base.” Ren did not look to the side.

  
“Mm.” Hux nodded, keeping his own eyes straight ahead.

  
“It’s too bad for you that we cannot strike until we find Skywalker.”

  
“Yes,” said Hux with a poison smile at the corridor in front of him. “It is too bad for me.”

  
They did not speak another word to each other as they made their way back to the command center. The morning’s snow was beginning to lighten, and some daylight had crept back into the sky. Hux briefly regretted leaving his cap in his quarters, but something about the prospect of combing his hair in front of Kylo Ren put him off far more than the cold.

  
It was not unil they were in the elevator back up that Ren spoke again.

  
“You’re nervous,” he said.  
“Excuse me?”

  
“Your career depends on the success of Starkiller Base.” Ren shifted his weight from one foot to the other, still stooping. “Starkiller Base depends on the success of my hunt for Skywalker.”

 

Hux smiled at his counterpart. “Lord Ren,” he said. “I don’t recall—did I tell you this morning what my father used to do as a gesture of good luck?”

  
Ren shifted his feet. He leaned in toward Hux; Hux stood up straight and tall and ignored the strange feeling of being watched from behind.

  
“He used to slap his side several times.” Ren nodded, thumped the heel of his hand to his belt as he stepped back from Hux. “As he did when he was treating his war wound. He liked to remind those around him that he had held his own body together once. He believed it was the way of the world.” He nodded. “You feel that you have been the same way.”

  
“I…” Hux blinked at the masked creature, his jaw hanging open for a moment.

  
“Do not deceive yourself, General.” As the elevator slowed, Ren turned to face the door. “You may one day accomplish something independent of someone like me. It won’t be Starkiller Base.”

  
The elevator doors hissed open.

  
Hux felt rage well in his throat, hot and red, as the ungainly creature strode down the hallway ahead of him. He nonetheless managed to keep his face calm as he followed Kylo Ren into the command center.


	3. Different Up Close

Friday night dinner was capsule noodles at his office console again while he answered a large pile of inconsequential messages from colleagues and underlings. Capsule noodles had been all he could keep down since he’d boarded the Finalizer ten cycles ago.

  
“Messaging,” he said, draping a heap of scalding noodles off his fork in front of him. “Reply individually to last five messages.”

  
“Messages addressed,” said the console. “You may speak when ready.”

  
“Thank you for the update,” Hux dictated. “The First Order makes note of your loyal service. End message. Official signature.” Hux was admittedly indelicate about scooping the noodles into his mouth, but this late at night there was nobody but the droids to notice his bad manners.

  
For several hours between 2200 and 0200, Hux could usually count on getting work done without interruption. He had long ago abandoned the idea that he could expect to sleep in space for more than a couple of hours at a time, which was just as well as far as the construction commanders on Starkiller Base were concerned. 0200 Imperial was about 1500 in the command center, which meant that for once in Hux’s life, people were happy to continue to do their damn jobs while he was in space helping Kylo Ren chase down a bedtime story.

  
He began to open the next batch of messages. Hux was halfway through a deck commander’s rambling explanation of a human resources problem when the screech of a High Priority Alert came blasting through every room in his personal quarters.  
He jumped in his seat, stabbed his fingers into the throbbing red orb in his holoface.

  
“What!” he snapped at the fuzzy figure of Kylo Ren appearing in front of him. “What is it? You know these are my office hours–”

  
“We have taken Voonak alive,” said the mask on the holoface. “We have pulled the division out. We will return to the Finalizer.”

  
“Thank you, Lord Ren,” said Hux. “Don’t use the emergency signal to contact me during my office hours again.”

  
By the time he had finished his sentence, the mask had disappeared.

****

There was a certain balance of coffee and capsule noodles that Hux managed to reach so that he was only shaking a little as he attended the landing of Kylo Ren’s shuttle at 0540. He stood watching with his hands behind his back and his long coat draped over his shoulders while the ramp opened up to disgorge the victorious Ren and his new plaything.

  
A pair of storm troopers escorted the human male, battered and bruised, across the landing bay behind the skulking creature. Ren walked with a mild limp, probably from something easily prevented.

  
“Where is Captain Phasma?” Hux called to the mask and the cloak.

  
Kylo Ren halted. He turned his mask to face Hux. “Phasma is returning with her storm troopers,” he said. “They had wounded to evacuate.”

  
That sounded expensive.

  
“I would have sent a medical team if that were my concern,” Hux said. “I have spoken to–”

  
“The delay will be brief.” Lord Ren turned around again and walked toward an exit. The storm troopers with the prisoner followed close behind him.

  
Hux strode across the deck to catch up with Lord Ren. “How did you capture this man?” he said.

  
“Quickly.” Ren did not turn his face to reply. “He was foolish.”

  
Perhaps if he’d been operating on more sleep and less synthetic wheat byproduct, Hux would have remarked that most friends of Ren’s father were foolish.

  
Ren stank of smoke and some kind of chemical. He, too, was no doubt running on his last defective nerve. He did not speak as he walked down the corridor toward the interrogation chamber.

  
The prisoner was not doing well. Medics has seen to him on the way up from the planet, but there was only so much they could do for his substantial injuries. His tunic had been stained with blood all up and down the back, and his face was battered and bruised. The stormtroopers were being gentle with him, carrying him more than dragging him forward. Hux doubted that he’d last very long in the interrogation chamber.

  
Ren did not appreciate having company while he interrogated prisoners. There was not a man aboard the Finalizer who would look askance at Hux for standing outside while the mask did his own ghoulish work. The cell doors muffled any sound that might be coming from the prisoner or the interrogator. Only the probe droid’s footage later on (assuming the probe droid survived an hour of keeping company with Kylo Ren) would verify anything that happened in that room.

  
Hux stood outside for ten minutes, for twenty minutes. Once, he jolted himself up straight and realized he had begun to fall asleep on his feet.

  
Shortly after he marked an hour on his watch, the cell door behind him slid open.

  
Hux turned to face Kylo Ren as he stepped out into the hallway. “Well?” he said.

  
“I got what I needed.” The mask stayed still, facing Hux dead center.

  
“Good.” Hux’s frown faded a little. “Lord Snoke will–”

  
“Do you want to kill a man?”

  
Hux blinked. “What?”

  
The mask stayed perfectly still; the creature’s shoulders heaved with an irregular rhythm. “I have no more use for the prisoner,” he said. “You’ve never killed a man. The experience would be—educational.”

  
“I–”

  
Kylo Ren handed him a blaster. “I assume you remember how to fire one of these,” he said.

  
“I kill men by the thousand, My Lord,” said Hux, sneering up at the mask in the hood as he snatched the blaster from his grasp. “One pitiful Resistance spy is a minor inconvenience you could have dealt with yourself.”

  
“As you say.”

  
Hux flicked the safety off and rolled his eyes as he walked into the cell. The prisoner was writhing against his restraints, moaning faintly with his eyes unfocused and his jaw slack. Hux raised the blaster and fired without giving it any more thought than he would a simulation in the holodeck—but as the man went limp, a deep and paralyzing doubt began to overtake his senses. He blinked. The prisoner’s head lolled to the side. Hux realized he was breathing hard; his vision blurred a little at the edges.

  
“It’s not the same thing,” said Kylo Ren as he sidled up behind him, pried the blaster from his outstretched hand.

  
Hux spun around at the sudden contact and stepped back. “Perhaps not,” he said, “if you subscribe to certain mystical arguments.”

  
“You’ve never seen a man die before,” said Kylo Ren. “You’ve never seen it happen.”

  
“I see no logical reason for that to be significant,” Hux replied. “I won’t be intimidated by you because you go around poking holes in people.”

  
“You did well, General.” Kylo Ren put the blaster back in its holster and whipped his cloak around as he turned to walk away. “Get some sleep.”


	4. The Ace, Part I

You could hear it in the weight rooms, in the hallways. Every click of Hux’s heels on the floor echoed back with the rumor. The Ace, the Ace, the Ace was coming. The Ace was coming, and there wasn’t a thing in the universe that could be done about it.  
Hux supposed that there would be benefits to Colonel Tarr’s brief tenure aboard the Finalizer. The TIE Fighter commander was one of the First Order’s most lethal weapons, rampaging around the Outer Rim with a special forces unit known for its flexibility and deadliness. His arrival on the Finalizer – a three-day resupply stop – was on the lips of every officer and pilot on the ship.

 

The unfortunate thing about attention whoring with a battalion of TIE Fighters was that it was incredibly effective. Hux was expected to greet Colonel Tarr’s arrival with his senior staff and a small ceremonial guard.

  
As soon as their fighters were inside the landing bay’s force field, the fighters’ pilots and gunners dropped down from their craft and hustled in a group across the deck toward Hux and Phasma. They moved with ease, running across the deck with long, jubilant strides that echoed on the alusteel walls.

  
Tarr removed his helmet as he neared Hux and Phasma. He was a tall, broad man with a handsome face and black hair and eyes as blue as Hux’s. He bolted ahead of his men to tackle Phasma in a sloppy, clanking one-armed hug.  
“Captain!” he said, a grin on his face as he stepped back. “I see you’ve been taking care of yourself!”

  
“And I see you’ve done the same.” Phasma straightened her cloak. The cheer in her voice was audible through the voice filter.

  
Tarr was examining Hux at a short distance. “General,” he said with a brief salute. “I think we’ve met–”

  
“Briefly,” said Hux, attempting a smile at the man who was, thankfully, not quite bold enough to hug him. “At the rally on Sathor, I believe.”

  
“Ah, yes,” said Tarr. “A spectacle like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  
Hux’s mouth opened reflexively to chide the Colonel for having the audacity to refer to a key display of the First Order’s capability as a ‘spectacle,’ but he kept quiet. He’d read about Colonel Tarr. He’d read a great deal about Colonel Tarr. The more he’d read about Colonel Tarr, the clearer it had become that he needed to get Colonel Tarr on his ship and off again as quickly as humanly possible.

 

“Indeed,” Hux said. “The First Order’s might is—unprecedented.”

  
“Truly unprecedented.” Colonel Tarr’s eyes glittered. He scanned the bay behind Hux. “I see you’ve been entrusted with quite the force up here,” he said.

  
“Only in proportion,” Hux replied, “with the importance of the work the _Finalizer_ is doing for Lord Snoke.”

  
“Ah.” The bigger man’s smile froze on his face. His eyes were fixed on Hux’s.

  
It was never a good sign when Hux did not know what to say to something like 'ah.’

****

Hux braced his forearms against the cold alusteel walls and gasped for air. The sink roared as it auto-washed the remains of a formal dinner down the drain.

  
He was shaking, and he could not stop himself. His teeth were chattering, and his ribs quaked no matter how he pressed his arms against the cubicle walls. He tried to still himself, tried to find some gripping point where he could grab hold of his own behavior. Instead, he curled over the sink again as his stomach resumed its theatrics.

  
By the time Hux was confident that he could step away from the sink, he had only the energy to sit on the floor with his hands over his face and his back against the cabinet. Outside the lav, he could hear a domestic droid purr with concern.

  
His mind kept going back to the table. The way Colonel Tarr and Captain Phasma fell in together like old schoolmates. The ease with which his fighter pilots carried themselves. The awkward truce that had sprung up between him and the mask across the table.

  
If Colonel Tarr had been cool to Hux, he had been nigh disrespectful to Kylo Ren. The man had a way of looking—of looking around you, like he he had been sent to find your class’s instructor and found only you leading simulation drills. He responded to Kylo’s remarks with brief, monosyllabic answers, rarely deigning to do more than incline his head in the Sith Lord’s direction.

  
Lord Ren had shown a surprising tolerance for this kind of treatment from Colonel Tarr. He restrained himself from throwing a destructive fit and interrupting the older man’s stories of his (admittedly shocking) behavior during the Caralana Campaign, instead opting to force-fling his chair across the room and storm out of the dining hall.

  
Hux could not shake the image of Colonel Tarr eyeballing him as Kylo Ren stalked away to pout in the bowels of the _Finalizer_. Surely, he knew that he himself was renowned for having certain discipline problems among his ranks. Surely, he knew what it was to give Hux such a long, direct look as Hux’s co-commander behaved like an infant at an officer’s dinner.

  
He regained his feet slowly, deliberately. As he got the bottle of mouthwash out of the cabinet over the sink, he realized he was not done shaking. When the vomit taste had been purged from his mouth, he walked to his bed and lay down without taking off his boots.

  
His mind kept going back to the table. The way Colonel Tarr and Captain Phasma fell in together like old schoolmates. She’d been with him on the Caralana campaign, back when the Green Eighteenth had been running around on speeders torching villages and hunting Jedi. Rumor had it, she’d thrown the first firebomb into that hospital full of civilians.

  
She never looked comfortable like that when she was talking to the people she called 'faces.’ She never looked like she was happy to see someone—never actually smiled at some shared memory with her eyes glittering and her cheeks flushed. She had no reason, Hux supposed. She had never served with any of them, never fired upon–

  
“General Hux, you have a visitor,” said the monitor above his bed.

  
He opened his eyes, rolled onto his back. “Show me,” he said.

  
When the shadowy figure of Kylo Ren appeared on the holoscreen above him, Hux rolled over onto his side and shut his eyes. “What do you want?”

  
“I need to speak with you,” said Ren. “Alone.”

  
“Can it wait?”

  
“The matter is important.”

  
Unless Tarr had just taken control of the _Finalizer_ , it wasn’t important. “Open front door,” Hux said.

  
He stood up and walked to the antechamber of his apartment, stopping briefly at a gleaming cabinet front on the way to make sure he was presentable.

  
Ren was sitting sprawled on his couch when he walked in, his cloak thrown back to reveal the lightsaber at his hip.

  
“You are disturbed,” he said. “By Tarr.”

  
“This entire ship is disturbed by Tarr,” Hux snapped. “His presence here has a poor effect on discipline and–”

  
“You are afraid.” The mask tipped to one side; Ren took three long steps toward him. Hux had that feeling again, the feeling that someone was watching him from behind.

  
“Would you stop doing that?” he hissed.

  
“I see.” Kylo Ren stood, bowed to Hux. “He has done nothing to substantiate your fears.”

  
“What are you talking about?” He sneered at the mask looming over him, stinking of rum. He put his hands behind his back before they started to shake again. “If you have time to come in here and insult me, you have time to be finding Skywalker.”

  
“You’re afraid I’m going to touch you again,” said the mask.

 

“Would you stop–”

  
“This is mere perception, General,” said the creature who was standing close enough that Hux could feel the heat radiating from his body. “It’s not hard to see. You are afraid of me.”

  
“You have my respect, My Lord,” Hux replied. “But afraid–”

  
He looked down and frowned at the creature’s gloved hand upon his chest.

  
“Afraid,” he said, looking up at the mask again, “is not the term I would use.” He knew that Lord Ren could feel his heart working double speed in his chest, could see the tips of his ears burning.

  
“Perhaps not.” There was no telling what Kylo Ren’s face was doing behind his mask. His hand remained on Hux’s chest. “Do you know what I look like, General?” he asked.

  
“You look like a second-rate gangster from Jakku,” said Hux. “Trying to extort someone in an alleyway.”

  
That remark got Ren to remove his hand from his chest, but that victory was brief – he was taking his mask off, unfastening vacuum seals that held it to his face.

  
Hux had always assumed that there was some reason that Kylo Ren wore a mask and used a voice filter. He’d just never accounted for the possibility that Kylo Ren might simply look about fifteen years old, pale and awkward with gentle brown eyes and a soft wide mouth that quaked a little. He scowled down at Hux as if expecting some repelled response.

  
Hux blinked. “Well?” he said. “Are you going to start spluttering, or gasping for air, or something?”

  
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” he said. Though he had a strange, sudden affect to his speech, there was nothing abnormal about Ren’s voice.

  
“Good,” Hux replied. “If that were a job requirement, I think my life may have taken a different turn.”

  
Kylo Ren met his eyes and stared at him for the better part of a minute. He blinked, Hux blinked, Ren kept staring at him.

  
“Do you have anything else?” Hux asked.

  
Ren shook his head. He looked down, put his mask back on his head. “In the future,” he said as he turned toward the door, “try to panic about things that are worth discussing.”


	5. The Ace, Part II

Colonel Tarr's body moved like an ocean, rapid and elegant and imbued with enough force to kill a man without trying. His face was calm and focused as he dodged, absorbed, returned the blows from Phasma's black-wrapped fists. If he heard the cheers and jeers coming from the crowd around the ring, he gave no indication.

 

The two of them moved almost too fast for Hux's eyes to track. He was sitting on a bench between Colonel Tapikk and Brigadier-General Hatha, dressed like they were in nothing but boots and training slacks, sucking water out of a soft plastic bottle while he steeled his nerves for whatever was coming next.

 

Round four ended with the bell. The referee, one of the Jedarr brothers from Artillery Deck B17, separated the two fighters so their seconds could tend to them in their corners. It wasn't that Hux hadn't offered to regenerate Phasma's broken nose and ruptured cheeks; it was that she refused to have anyone but her own stormtroopers tend to her between rounds.

 

The crowd of officers rumbled as Tarr and Phasma each took their rest, surrounded respectively by fighter pilots and by stormtroopers. Colonel Tarr's arms were long and sinewy, and they moved so rapidly it was a marvel to Hux that Phasma could dodge his blows. Her own fists were just as dangerous; Colonel Tarr's nose had twice been caved in with a nauseating snap.

 

The rumble grew to a roar as the referee returned to the center of the ring. Phasma thumped both fists to her chest as she took a stance about halfway to the middle; Colonel Tarr snapped his thick neck back and forth and moved his toothguard around in his mouth.

 

The referee held his arms level, looking between the two fighters with more than a little genuine fear on his face. Even Hux leaned in to the ring a little bit as silence overtook the officers' gymnasium, his fists clenched and his heart in his throat.

 

The bell rang.

 

The referee managed to leap back before Phasma and Tarr collided with each other in the middle of the ring. Having made it through all but the last round without showing each other their full strength, the two went at the last one with everything they had.

 

Phasma's defensive strategy, which had been so deliberate and so efficient up until now, had been burned off by an animal passion that directed itself at Tarr's face. She absorbed blows to her face, to her body, to the square-edged muscles of her legs, as if she had a personal force field.

 

Tarr had no idea what to do with the solar storm of a woman that was suddenly directly in his face, and he was delighted. He hit Phasma when he could and where he could, and eventually he landed two rapid blows to her face that shattered an eye socket and put the stormtrooper commander off her balance.

 

“Keep up keep up keep up!” Colonel Tappik screamed beside Hux.

 

“Get 'er Will!” yelled a pilot across the ring.

 

The Green Eighteenth stood up in unison and roared as Tarr followed up with two body blows and a headshot that knocked Phasma back against the ropes, her hands in front of her face and her jaw slack. He had a chance to prolong the round by another blow or two; the knockout punch was undoubtedly the kinder option.

 

 

Hux watched Phasma's limp figure slide down the ropes as if on a slow motion replay. _She's your comrade_ , he reminded himself. _Her honor is your honor_ , he reminded himself.

 

His mouth went dry.

 

Hux didn't realize that he had stood until he was on his feet, his fingers clenched around the thin, padded glove that was taped to his wrist at the cuff. His senses were so focused on the sight of Phasma's stormtroopers helping her recover, of Tarr consoling her as he waited to take her hand in the middle of the ring, that he did not hear how it started.

 

All he knew, as he walked toward the sweating fighter pilot who now stood alone, was that they were chanting his name.

 

He had been through this ritual a million times, one of the oldest rituals of mankind. Some said that the art of boxing was one of the earliest means of awakening the Dark Side in an individual. As much as Hux wanted to laugh at those people, he could not deny the electrical kind of focus that seized his body as he met Colonel Tarr's intense icy gaze.

 

He jammed his mouthguard up against his teeth and breathed in rhythm to his feet as he knocked knuckles with the bigger man.

 

He bounced back on his toes. The bell rang. The referee shot backward.

 

Colonel Tarr was very large, and very fast, and Hux's face exploded in pain when his first shot landed square in his nose.

 

His first thought was of the heat of an explosion, blowing him off his feet toward the ropes. He barely caught his balance on his trailing foot, managed to move to the side fast enough that Tarr's next blow was a glancing hit on his ribcage.

 

Where were his hands?

 

Hux flew back at Tarr with a wild cry and the fastest barrage of jabs he could manage. His first strike connected, and his second--

 

Phasma was slapping his face gently, her mouth very small and her eyes very big. “General?” she was saying.

 

It was very bright. There was a lot of Phasma directly above him, and lights, and very little else.

 

“General, I need you to say something,” Phasma said. “I can get medical--”

 

“Haagh!” Hux tried to sit up; his head was pounding.

 

Phasma was holding him down. They could all see him. They could all see him lying here immobile, staring up at the swimming ceiling of the officers' gymnasium, while they removed the impression of Colonel Tarr's fist from his face.

 

“Let's not move _quite_ so fast,” Phasma said. “BX-93489 – get that neck scanner over here.”

 

****

 

To her credit, Phasma made extremely sure that Hux left the gymnasium on his own two feet, with his spinal column regenerated and his nosebleed under control. He dismissed Tapikk and Hatha shortly outside the clamorous hall, saying something vague about being back for cocktails after he answered some messages.

 

He had to go back. He had to bear witness to Colonel William Tarr's last night aboard the _F.O.S. Finalizer,_ and he had to drink with him, and he had to laugh at his jokes. He had to shake his hand, and he had to be impressed with his war stories, and he had to ignore the casual, disorderly way the man conducted himself among Hux's officers.

 

He hurried through the motions of refreshing himself in his quarters. He put on his dress uniform. He gelled and combed his hair. He washed his face. He ran a depi-stick over his jaws. He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

 

He had not allowed Phasma and her stormtroopers to heal the split skin above his eye, or the bruising that marred the whole right side of his face. Every single one of his officers had seen Tarr punch him almost hard enough to kill him. Would he pretend he had been unscathed? Would he show his men not only that he was incompetent in the boxing ring, but also that he was cowardly enough to disguise his weakness?

 

Hux checked his teeth before leaving his quarters. He kept his breathing steady as he made his way down the maze of hallways that led to the first deck officers' lounge.

 

When he arrived, Colonel Tarr and the pilots of the Green Eighteenth had taken to the dance floor, a First Order officer on each of their arms. The Colonel himself was wheeling around with Phasma, less focused on dancing than with exchanging remarks that had both of them roaring with laughter.

 

Hux took a gin and tonic from a passing server droid and glued a diplomatic smile to his face as he searched the room for Tapikk. Or Hatha.

 

Tapikk, he saw immediately, had been abducted to the dance floor by a TIE Fighter pilot with a robotic eye and a nasty scar instead of the left half of her face. Hatha—where was Hatha? Hatha was always good company at a party. Hatha--

 

Before he could find the short, stocky man, Hux's eyes were arrested by it. On the second floor mezzanine, opposite from him. Standing stock still. The mask, gleaming in the flourescent lights.

 

Hux took his time pouring his entire gin and tonic down his throat. Nobody was paying attention to him up here on the mezzanine.

 

Except the mask. The mask did not tilt or shift while Hux indulged in this petulant display. The mask was not going to be deceived by a warm smile or a firm handshake.

 

The mask followed Hux down the stairs to the dance floor. It watched as he snatched up a second gin and tonic, scanned the crowd for his favored social companions.

 

It watched as he failed to reunite with either Tapikk or Hatha. It watched as Colonel Tarr noticed him, came sweeping through the crowd flanked by Phasma and five of his TIE Fighter pilots.

 

“General Hux!” called the Colonel as he approached, unsteady on his feet. He held a half-empty bottle of (very expensive, very strong) Galagian ale in one hand and the waist of one of the _Finalizer's_ comm Lieutenants in the other. “Finally! We can start the dancing!”

 

The comm Lieutenant's face drained as she looked Hux up and down. “Uh, Colonel, actually,” she slurred in his ear, prying his fingers from her body. “I have—I got a thing, I'm sorry...”

 

Hux paid no mind to the girl as she bolted away from them. “Colonel Tarr,” he said with a smile. “So happy to see you haven't exhausted yourself testing our hand-to-hand combat skills here on the _Finalizer_.”

 

A low, nervous chuckle sprang up on cue from the ring of officers around them.

 

“No happier than I am to meet a senior officer who can take a square fist to the jaw,” said Tarr. “Your father would have flayed me for that, General.”

 

“My father...”

 

Hux realized his jaw was hanging open. He realized that every pair of eyes – eyes of his father's friends, eyes of Tarr's comrades, eyes of people who just wanted to see more blood – was on the pair of them, standing in the middle of this ring of drunks with their eyes locked and their spines straight.

 

“The elder General Hux is not here.”

 

Hux's eyes shut involuntarily as the mask slinked out from behind him. Did he think he was—no, of course he didn't think he was helping. He _knew_ he wasn't helping.

 

“Come now, Lord Ren,” said Tarr, blinking as he took in the spectre before him. His drunken merriment seemed to slide off him like he was emerging from a bath of it, squaring his shoulders and looking Kylo Ren up and down. “We're—we're all friends of the family here, are we not?”

 

Hux realized that Phasma had been standing in the center of Tarr's group of pilots. They all shifted away, leaving her a stern island among the nervous faces of the Green Eighteenth.

 

“Friends of the family.” Kylo Ren had missed his chance to come at Colonel Tarr like a respectable human being. He had to do it here, masked and cloaked, circling around the seasoned commander like some carrion bird scenting the wreck of a landspeeder.

 

You couldn't just do that to Colonel Tarr. Colonel Tarr was bound to respond.

 

“Yes,” he said, a too-wide smile suddenly plastered on his broad face. “Yes,” he said, “I—I think we're all—we're all friends here--”

“We are burdened with a great task, Colonel.” Kylo Ren stopped suddenly in front of Tarr, curving his spine unnaturally to crane his neck up at the TIE Fighter commander. “You...don't take it seriously.”

 

The memory of Tarr's fist implanting itself firmly in Hux's face was too recent for him to stand by for this. “Lord Ren,” he snapped. “I—I appreciate your devotion to the public face of the First Order, but--”

 

“You mock us.” Ren did not interrupt his movements, or his visual lock on Tarr. “You think you are superior.”

 

Hux's heart leapt into his throat, going double speed—triple speed. “Lord Ren,” he said. “If I may have a word--”

 

“My Lord, we're just trying to make small talk,” said Colonel Tarr, softening his smile and inclining his head in a little toward Lord Ren. His body was still tensed for a fight. His pilots were watching Lord Ren with visible anticipation.

 

It occurred to Hux that the entire officers' lounge had gone silent.

 

“A fighter pilot,” said Kylo Ren. “Pushing fifty. You have no hope for advancement.” He was breathing hard, his back rising with every inhale.

 

Hux swallowed.

 

Colonel Tarr's mouth shifted. His eyes lost their sparkle. His fingers tightened against the heels of his broad, heavy hands.

 

“A poor family,” Kylo Ren continued. “Your...father.” He took several labored breaths. “Your father spent all of it,” he said. “Before you were born.”

 

“General Hux!” Phasma blurted, waving to him as if she'd just spotted him across the crowd. “General Hux, I need to--”

 

“On his mist--”

 

Colonel Tarr held up a single finger of his left hand as he held his beer to his lips with his right. He raised the bottle as he drained the liquor inside. When he was done, he let the bottle fall from a full arm's length above his head.

 

Every officer on the Star Destroyer except for Hux, Phasma, and Kylo Ren stepped back from the sound of glass shattering on ceramite tile.

 

Colonel Tarr stepped back, an insane grin growing on his face.

 

For the rest of his life, Hux was going to have to give Phasma credit for this. For abandoning the alusteel wall of Stormtrooper Commander that she had built herself to make her way in this universe. For leaping forward, genuine terror on her huge, dumb face for perhaps the first time in her huge, dumb life. Her lips curled downward. Her voice gagging in her throat.

“Will!”  


But Colonel Tarr's fist had already been launched at Kylo Ren's throat.

 

Officers cleared a path as Tarr's body sped across the floor, the back of his head propelled by the Force choke rippling the flesh of his thick-muscled neck.

 

“Lord Ren!” Hux dropped his drink, ran to Ren's side and took him by the shoulders with all his strength. The other man was shockingly easy to turn to one side, to shake like a misbehaving first-year cadet while he screamed in his face, “What the _fuck_ do you think you are doing, Ren?” he shouted. “Do you think this is a game?” He felt his forehead throb as Ren's body tensed in his grip. He realized he had just done this in public. He could feel hundreds—no, _thousands_ of pairs of eyes on him, using foul language in front of his troops, after drinking. Thousands of pairs of eyes. Foul language. Alcohol.

 

Lord Ren took a moment to wrest his shoulders out of Hux's grasp and turn to face him, looking for all the galaxy like he was ready to throw a punch any second.

 

Hux swallowed, splayed his fingers before him, made his mouth into a thin, straight line across his jaws. He stared up at the mask. “ This,” he whispered, “is not acceptable, behavior, on, my, _ship.”_

 

On the other wall of the officers' lounge, the pilots of the Green Eighteenth were crowding around Colonel Tarr as he regained his composure.

 

“I'm sorry,” said Lord Ren. “I was told that you did not tolerate disrespect.”

 

“I don't,” Hux replied. “Especially not in front of visiting officers.”

 

“Lord Ren, may I have a _word?”_ Phasma had extricated herself from Tarr's men, was staring over Kylo Ren's shoulder.

 

For the better part of a minute the mask stayed level, turned to meet Hux's stare. Behind them, Tarr and his pilots were storming out of the officers' lounge in a disgruntled mass. Hux's heart was resuming its frantic dance in his throat.

 

“Let's take a walk.” Lord Ren gestured to Phasma with one hand as he stormed out of the lounge, Phasma close on his heels.

 

Though there were still several hours scheduled in the going-away party, the hospitality droids had already begun to pack up the drinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Be Continued
> 
> Also, Christmas Cookies to you if you can guess where Colonel Tarr and the Green Eighteenth blew in from (it's not from the Star Wars universe but this is my fanfic and I'm allowed to have fun)


	6. The Ace, Part III (The Aftermath)

Hux's fingers shook as they separated three Theristol pills from the pile he'd spilled into his hands. He was on the floor again, crammed into a corner of his lav unit, his heartbeat pounding in his ears louder than a shell burst. This was a night to be weak. This was a night to be pathetic. This was a night to get Colonel Tarr off his fucking ship without any further theatrics.

 

He chased the pills with a drink of gin he really wasn't supposed to mix with this medication. His medication's warning label hadn't been written for people who had to deal with Kylo Ren.

 

The pills wouldn't really take effect for another half hour, maybe another forty-five minutes. In Hux's mind, they began to restore order and harmony within a few seconds of the sensation of them going down his throat.

 

He stood up. He looked in the mirror, took the folding comb from his pocket. Something about combing his hair was like resetting the ETF fuses on a service droid – it brightened his eyes, somehow helped him breathe easier as he stared at his reflection.

 

He was almost at the door when the monitor said, “General Hux, you have a visitor.”

 

He shut his eyes for a moment as he strode across his antechamber. “Open front door.”

 

He was relieved to see Colonel Tapikk standing there, hollow-eyed and frowning. She nodded to Hux and said nothing as she preceded him up the corridor toward the elevator that would take them to the bridge.

 

Hux had spent a lot of somber elevator rides with Colonel Tapikk. She just stood there, her hands behind her back and her eyebrows up as high as they would go and her heels scooted together while her tongue worked behind her teeth. She said nothing, and she said everything. She had escaped the ruin of two Death Stars, seen three husbands killed in the line of duty. For this high price she had been granted the knowledge that there really wasn't anything she could say to Hux, at this point, that would help.

 

The doors hissed open into the hallway that would take them to the TIE Fighter dock.

 

“Do you think they're still there?”

 

Hux had to ask, had to open his mouth even at this juncture.

 

“No, Sir,” said Colonel Tapikk. She did not look at him.

 

She was right. They came out into an empty TIE Fighter bay, tiny black coated figures in a vast expanse of professional humiliation.

 

Hux sucked in a long, deep breath. He nodded at the distant stars, let the chilly silence settle over him like an unwelcome blanket.

 

“We should find Phasma, sir,” said Tapikk.

 

Hux ran his tongue across his teeth, kept nodding. “Yes, Colonel,” he said. “We really should.”

 

****

 

He knew she wouldn't be on the bridge, but if Hux went and sulked on the bridge at 0100 hours, he could catch up on the day's construction reports while looking for all the galaxy like he wasn't sulking. When he entered, the glitter of a dozen closing instant messaging holofaces told him all he needed to know about the status of news concerning the incident with Colonel Tarr.

 

Starkiller Base had almost begun to recover from the _Clarity_ 's delay. All but one of his construction commanders had successfully reprioritized their materials scheduling, and as for Joffa – he was going to have to do something about Joffa when he was on planet again.

 

“General, do you have a moment?” Lieutenant-Colonel Magnar appeared behind him, a tablet in one hand.

 

“Yes.” Hux realized he'd been staring out at the stars like an idiot, blinked several times to bring his focus back. _Three_ Theristol, he remembered. And gin.

 

“I've had Sector Three Engineering run a level nine evaluation of the gun circuits on Deck C8,” he said. “They found--”

 

Both men turned to the bridge doors as they hissed open. Both men watched Kylo Ren walk past, stare at the officers on the bridge, and then walk away. Both men watched the bridge doors hiss closed again.

 

Magnar read Hux's face with nervous eyes for a moment.

 

Hux could not help but heave a sigh and shake his head. “What did the report find, Lieutenant-Colonel?”

 

****

 

By the time Hux returned to the hab sector, he was seeing Kylo Ren behind every support column and around every curve of the corridor. Seeing his figure blocking the hallway outside his personal quarters was almost relieving; Hux only jumped halfway out of his skin when he turned the corner.

 

“Let me get this correct, My Lord,” he said as he approached, peeling his gloves from his hands. “At 0140, you opened the bridge doors to stare at us, and it is now 0230. Which, if we assume it takes you ten minutes to skulk--”

 

“Colonel Tarr's behavior was inexcusable.” Ren was not showing off his light saber or attempting to make his skinny shoulders fill the entire hallway.

 

“Colonel Tarr is gone,” said Hux. “And I do not wish to discuss him again until I have slept.”

 

“He insulted you in front of--”

 

“Tarr's remarks to me were mild, and it would have been better to ignore him.” He ret-scanned into his quarters without looking at Lord Ren. He briefly wondered what it would have taken to stop him from following him inside his quarters.

 

“This will anger Lord Snoke.” Ren was breathing with his shoulders again, his head weighed down by the weight of his mask. “He will be punished.”

 

“Colonel Tarr has gone his entire life without being punished,” said Hux, setting his gloves on his side table and emptying his pockets. When he had his mini-tablet, commlink earpiece, contact lens kit all lined up where they belonged, he turned to Kylo Ren.

 

“May I offer you some advice?” he said, tipping his head to one side.

 

The mask did not move.

 

“Learn to recognize personal problems,” said Hux, staring intently as he could at a featureless eye slit. “And don't annoy Lord Snoke with them.”

 

He waited for that feeling as he removed his long coat, put it neatly on the hanger hooked on the rack by his table. It was starting to become familiar, the sensation of having someone staring through the back of his head.

 

Instead, he heard the sound of vacuum seals unfastening.

 

When Hux turned around, Kylo Ren was watching him, holding his helmet awkwardly in front of his stomach. He breathed through his mouth; the unfortunate habit had stained his crooked teeth, given him the appearance of constantly being out of breath.

 

“You...could have healed your injuries.” Lord Ren had a way of looking at you with his neck. “You didn't.”

 

“They were minor,” said Hux as he walked to his sofa. “It's considered sporting to--”

 

“Your men have never seen you injured before,” said Lord Ren. “You wanted them to see.”

 

“You might consider going back to rifling through my private thoughts – HD7, two cups of water.”

 

The service droid wheeled off with a cheerful series of blips.

 

“Anyway,” said Hux as he leaned back, “your perception doesn't seem to be working very well tonight.”

 

He decided that he wasn't going to invite Kylo Ren to sit down. He was going to watch Kylo Ren fidget and hover with his mask in his hands, stepping to and fro in front of Hux's couch like a nervous cadet at his first orals.

 

“Do you like it?” said the black-haired man. “Knowing...that you have experienced pain.”

 

“Are you asking me if I'm proud to have taken a jab in the face from William Tarr and lived to tell the tale?” A bitter smile found its way across Hux's mouth.

 

“It's always bothered you,” said Kylo Ren. “You've always been afraid...that you would one day know pain. And...that you would not be ready.”

 

Hux locked his eyes on Ren's. “If a man is truly ready for one thing--”

 

“--then he is ready for everything. I know.” Kylo Ren took several heavy breaths. “We, too...are taught old Imperial proverbs.”

 

When the service droid came back, Lord Ren went to meet it. He drained one of the alusteel cups that the cheerful machine brought him, put it back on the tray empty. He brought the other to Hux, held it in front of his face and stared at him.

 

Hux thinned his mouth and met Ren's gaze again as he took the drink from his gloved hand.

 

“Proverbs,” he said, several seconds into a heavy and unpleasant silence. “You've come to my personal quarters, hours after instigating a disciplinary incident that _will_ go on this ship's records, to tell me about old Imperial proverbs.”

 

“Phasma was concerned.” On either side of a remark from Ren was a moment of mouth-twitching that was physically painful to watch.

 

“Phasma has never had a concern that could not have been addressed in the hallway.” Hux took a long, blessed drink of something besides gin or coffee, rested his hand on the sofa's arm. He looked at the cup, looked up at Kylo Ren.

 

“Why are you here?” he asked.

 

“I...thought you would have words for me,” Lord Ren said.

 

“Words.” Hux shut his eyes, drank the rest of his water. “Fascinating. Five cycles ago you come in here _assuring_ me I need not be afraid of you,” he said. He set the cup down on a coaster on the table beside the couch. “And now you stand before me hoping against hope I'll dress you down here instead of doing it in public.” He stood, stepped so close to Kylo Ren that the taller man took a sudden step back.

 

“Then there is nothing...you wish to discuss.” Lord Ren blinked at him.

 

“You keep asking that.” Hux smiled. “At this point I'm surprised you haven't started going through my brain.”

 

“You asked me not to.” Lord Ren blinked again. His wide, gentle eyes flittered to the ground for a moment.

 

Hux's mouth hung open, some half-formed retort forgotten on his lips. “I—I asked you not to,” he said. He had asked so many things of Kylo Ren with no effect whatsoever that he'd begun to lose track. “Yes, I--”

 

Kylo Ren swallowed, and Hux took a moment to study his pale, crooked face. He had the complexion of a man who forgot to wash with soap, who picked at blemishes instead of waiting them out. His lips were trembling slightly; his jaw would hover open for a moment as if he were struggling for something to say.

 

Brendol Hux had not raised a son who kissed other men. Unfortunately for him, Han Solo had raised a son who _did_ , and whose lips were soft and gentle and damnably hard not to kiss back. Ren's mouth was hot on his, greedy despite his nervousness. His hands were greedy, too; he was clasping the back of Hux's uniform in fistfuls as the two men pressed against each other.

 

Behind him, he heard a sudden offended purr.

 

Hux realized as he turned to shush his hospitality droid that he was panting _and_ blushing. He froze for a moment. Kylo Ren was holding one of his hands in his.

 

“I shouldn't have--”

 

“No, no,” Hux said. “It's pissed off because it does my dry cleaning—go on!” He shooed the little droid. “Tidy my office or something.” He turned back to Kylo Ren, looked him up and down. “But I suppose it has a point,” he said.

 

Kylo Ren looked at him with one eye narrowed.

 

“You're filthy,” said Hux. “And if you're going to...to _apologize_ to me with your clothes on,” he said, “you're going to get _me_ filthy.”


	7. Fragments of His Own Reflection

_Ka-LANG! Ka-LANG!_

 

It never ceased. If the AT-AT was moving, the sound of its legs hammering away at the frozen ground beneath it was echoing through the cabin.

 

_Ka-LANG! Ka-LANG!_

 

“As you can see here, General,” shouted Brigadier-General Saropp, pointing with her poster tube out the forward window, “The windshield has already kept the site dry through one Cat 4 storm!” She was a squat, energetic woman in her forties, with curly brown hair and a wealth of freckles—the only other officer on this walker for this miserable tour of the construction of Precinct 98's restabilizer coils.

 

_Ka-LANG! Ka-LANG!_

 

“Excellent,” Hux yelled back. “I saw the transport scheduling reports from last month – I admit I'm impressed!” Four coats. He was wearing four coats, and his back ached from shivering.

 

_Ka-LANG! Ka-LANG!_

 

“I gotta give credit where it's due for that,” Saropp shouted, clutching a rack above her for balance as the AT-AT began to climb up a low rise. “My lift engineer's a damn genius at working in this cold, sir!”

 

_Ka-LANG! Ka-LANG!_

 

Construction was a very different process this close to the south pole of Starkiller Base. Although storms were vicious and sudden all over the ice planet, they became less predictable and much more frequent as you got further from the sun. The winds that swept over Precinct 98 were so vicious and stochastic that an AT-AT was the only way to safely get around the area.

 

There was no sunlight this far from the planet's equator, only the chemical glow of the worklights that illuminated the construction site. The stormtrooper sergeant at the walker's controls shut it down at 2000 hours base time; it was secured to pylons on the ground by means of heavy cables.

 

Saropp ate about as well as Hux did, although her fodder of choice was instant wheat buns and oleo packets she must have been in the habit of smuggling from the mess hall when she had the chance. She wasn't much of a talker – an engineer by training and a construction foreman by career who had built more Star Destroyers than Hux had probably seen in his life time. Her walker's cabin had that freshly undecorated look that Hux was becoming familiar with as he spent more time peering over his underlings' shoulders. When she thought he wasn't looking, she watched him carefully, no doubt trying to get a read on him.

 

They slept not on cots, but on hammocks hung from the cabin's ceiling. Hux supposed that made sense, although he couldn't even begin to imagine the combination of drugs it would take to get him to sleep on an AT-AT while it was moving.

 

Shortly after her first of what would be several attempts at going to bed (if last night had been any indication), Brigadier Saropp got up with a heavy sigh and went down to the lower deck muttering something about a transistor.

 

Below him, the AT-AT's crew jabbered and argued. Around him, the nighttime storms raked their claws across the walker's hull, howled and groaned in every crevice. His hammock swung gently, probably with the swaying of the walker in the wind. Somewhere in the darkness, a monitor was beeping steadily as a blue light flashed on the cabin's alusteel wall.

 

Space had somehow never been this lonely.

 

Hux shut his eyes, wriggled so his blanket was a decent shield against the cold that loomed on the other side of those alusteel walls. Even that motion was enough to send his mind back, back to his quarters on the _Finalizer_. That slender, ghostly body pinning him to the wall; those hands, so much more articulate than the lips that quivered and brushed against his skin.

 

Despite the mouth breathing, despite the lack of room on his cot, despite the way the man had to run his lanky hands up and down Hux's waist, he had slept better that night than he had in months. Several nights later, Kylo Ren interrupted his office hours to stand silently in his hallway. Hux woke alone, to a concerned Colonel Tapikk asking him if he was going to catch the first round of officer's breakfast.

 

On the one hand, this brief tour was probably giving Hux what they referred to in human resources as “some much-needed distance from the situation.” Kylo Ren was one of the very last people in the galaxy who needed to be in Hux's personal acquaintance, let alone in his bed while they were trying to get important work done for the First Order.

 

On the other hand, it was very cold at this end of the planet, and it was very easy to remember exactly how Kylo Ren's bare chest felt pressed close against Hux's back.

 

****

 

“The oscillator _will_ be finished on time, My Lord,” Hux called up at the hologram before him. “Our supplier has assured us repeatedly that the increased price will be reflected in the speed of delivery.”

 

“And this supplier's assurances have, in the past, been trustworthy?” Lord Snoke leaned slightly in toward Hux.

 

“I have spoken personally with the representative from the Jassilon Cartel,” said Hux. “Noting that two of his children are _distinguished guests_ here on Starkiller Base, I have become convinced that they will not fail us.”

 

“Good,” said Lord Snoke. “I hope the representative's children find their stay on Starkiller Base relaxing, and healthful.”

 

Hux's frame relaxed a little at that. Hostage-keeping was such a delicate and nuanced task, and so prone to causing more problems than it solved – Snoke would have been well within reason chiding Hux and ordering him to release the girls immediately.

 

“I intend for it to be that way, My Lord,” he said.

“And I trust that you do not need instruction in how to handle our guests should their father prove treacherous,” said Lord Snoke.

 

Hux smiled. “No, My Lord.”

 

“Then we have no further need of conversation this morning, General.” Snoke raised one aetherial hand, waved his holographic fingers toward the exit of his chamber.

 

Hux saluted, turned on his heels, and walked out.

 

He had gotten lucky his last two visits with the Supreme Leader. The antechamber had been empty, and the palatial complex sparsely populated except for droids and stormtroopers.

 

Only so much time could pass, however, before Hux and Kylo Ren collided once again in the palace of Lord Snoke. He was surrounded by his little knights today, all looking so very fearsome in their little masks. Hux wondered if perhaps one was concealing a terrible pimple, and if perhaps another had a tendency to blush when he was nervous.

 

As the door hissed shut behind Hux, Kylo Ren turned his head to stare at him as he walked through the antechamber.

 

Hux slid his gaze over to the mask for a brief moment, sneered, and strode straight through with his shoulders square and his back straight.

 

****

 

“General Hux, you have a visitor.”

 

The monitor's voice was different down on Starkiller Base – lower, a little more mellow – but nothing changed about the flickering shape of Kylo Ren's mask on the holoface.

 

“Open front door,” Hux said. He did not look up from the latest long, incoherent message chain about fluorine compressors he'd been forwarded by the sanitation division. He had a policy about message chains. He had a policy about message chains for this exact reason. He'd told the entire damned base, about eight or nine times, about the message chain policy. For this exact reason.

 

“I don't _care_ ,” he muttered at the screen, flickering through the part about the part number transposition for the twenty nine millionth time. “I don't _care,_ I don't...”

 

“Lord Snoke wants us back on the _Finalizer_ at the end of next week,” said Kylo Ren as he walked into the room.

 

“Excelle--” Hux froze mid-word, his hands in his holoface and his jaw agape, as Ren's words coagulated in his mind. “Next week,” he said. “The end of--”

 

“Thursday night,” said Kylo Ren. “At 2100 hours.”

 

“Thursday ni—and you're telling me _now.”_ Hux freeze-saved the holoface, tapped twice on his desk to collapse it.

 

“Our strike will be unexpected,” said Lord Ren. “We will show no--”

 

“My Lord.” Hux licked his lips, stared at the mask. His heartbeat was picking up again, and he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. “I just spent _eight hours_ in meetings with my top staff in which we scheduled the next _four weeks--_ ”

 

“Advise them their plans have changed,” said Lord Ren.

 

As the mask turned and began to walk out of his office, Hux bolted from behind his desk to grab him by one of the sleeves of his robes.

 

“Where the hell do you think you're going?” he hissed.

 

Now, it was Kylo Ren's turn to freeze, beginning with the arm that Hux held in his grip. He turned his mask to face him, breathed in silence for a few seconds while Hux glared at distorted fragments of his own reflection.

 

“Do you wish me to stay?” he said.

 

“No!” Yes. Yes, the mask be damned, spending the next cycle rescheduling an entire planet be damned, the faint warmth of Kylo Ren's gloved hand was a poor prize. “I want you to _tell me_ when you've just made a decision on my behalf that affects every, single, miniscule function on this planet and on the _Finalizer,_ Ren!”

 

“You command this base.” Ren pulled his hand away, turned to face Hux squarely. “If your staff must inconvenience--”

 

“Yes, My Lord, I command this base,” Hux said. “So it is _my_ reputation that suffers when you abuse my staff with your childish, impulsive--”

 

“Still so afraid.” Ren shook his head, turned to leave.

 

“Afraid of what?” Hux snapped. “Afraid of having to spend the next _week_ cleaning up another mess you've made?

 

For the second time, he had to chase the mask down and grab him, now by the shoulders. His face flushed as he pushed the taller man against the wall.

 

“Answer me,” he hissed up at the mask. “You do not come in here, lay waste to my week, and excuse yourself in a cloud of riddles and platitudes.”

 

For a few moments, Kylo Ren stood stiff against the wall. Then, he reached up and slowly removed his helmet.

 

“That's not an answer,” Hux said (although something in his shorts suggested it was good enough for now).

 

“You don't want to go back to space,” he said. “It, reminds you of what we did.”

 

“Oh, are we guilty about that now?” Hux blinked up at him.

 

“I'm not,” said Ren. He attempted a proud sneer, but his mouth was trembling, and he couldn't keep meeting Hux's eyes with his own.

 

“Then you're nervous.” Hux gave him a poison smile.

 

“I'm not,” snapped Ren, drawing himself up and doing his level best to look menacing.

 

Hux grinned, pushed closer against him. “Then why,” he murmured in the taller man's ear, “am I the one holding you against this wall?”


	8. Old Wounds, Part I

Hux kicked the door down and peered through the smoke filling the room. He found one human target in the blackness, fired on it, ignored the screaming that echoed through the chamber as Tapikk and Yang came in after him.

 

“This wall is clear!” Hux shouted, beckoning to his comrades to follow him toward a corridor where a siren was sounding.

 

A rebel trooper came bolting out, waving a flamethrower and howling like a wild beast. Hux dropped to a prone position and opened fire on her, only to hear Colonel Tappic scream, “Stay up! Stay up!”

 

The older woman unceremoniously grabbed him by his collar and hauled him to his feet as she charged forward. “They're in our flank!” she screamed.

 

Hux was looking for a target. Tapikk and Yang were crouched on either side of him, raining blaster fire down on a squad of rebels who'd come from the outside Hux's vision.

 

“Move!” Tapikk screamed.

 

With his heart on his throat and his hands damp beneath his gloves, Hux found it hard to argue. Or to think. Tapikk moved like a wild beast through the shelled-out storefronts, finding places for her and the command squad to shelter where there appeared to be none, ferreting out hidden enemies that Hux would have tripped over.

 

The night was dusty black; shadows seized and thrashed in the red strobe of blaster fire. Hux could smell smoke.

 

“Incoming!” Yang yelled on his right.

 

“Get out get out get _out!”_ Tapikk yelled. She hauled Hux up by his collar again, dragged him out of the storefront as an artillery blast shook the ground beneath them.

 

“General Hux!” yelled Brigadier Hatha. “General Hux, we've lost comm!”

 

“We're twenty yards--”

 

“Quiet!” Tapikk snapped, but it was too late. The three of them hit the ground under another barrage of small arms fire.

 

“Major,” Hux whispered to the black-haired woman by his side.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“I need you to find Hatha and tell him where we are,” he said. “Tell him we've lost--”

 

“We have company!” Shouted Captain Ossom from down the street.

 

“Dig in, boys!” Hatha screamed in reply. “Let's give the General some space!”

 

Colonel Tapikk was muttering something to herself in her own language, over and over and over again with her eyes wide and her lips thin. She had lost her cap. Her gray hair was coming out of the bun she wore netted at the nape of her neck. Hux followed her, belly-crawling, though the dust and the rubble of the bombd-out buildings that lined the streets.

 

And then, someone got the Objective.

 

In experiments, the klaxon that sounded at the end of a training simulation had been demonstrated to have a drug-like effect on officers. Hux, for one, knew that no chemical he'd ingested in his lifetime gave him quite the same rush as that electronic whine in his eardrums as the dark, dusty street began to crackle and fuzz around him.

 

Colonel Tapikk sat up and gasped like someone had just been holding her head under water. She put one hand to her forehead, stared into the air in front of her for a couple of seconds while she panted.

 

Major Yang crept toward her on hands and knees. “Ma'am?” she said. “Are you--”

 

The gray-haired woman folded in on herself, her knees drawn to her chin and her face held over her hands, and began to sob quietly into her legs.

 

“General, can I have a second?” Yang moved to shield her C.O. from Hux with her slim shoulders.

 

Hux himself was standing frozen, his eyes out of focus and his body leaning to one side as if he had stopped mid-stride.

 

“Major.” He nodded briefly to Yang and walked across the silent training hall to where Hatha was congratulating the pair of Lieuenants who'd apparently taken out the objective.

 

“Brigadier Hatha!” Hux called to the deck commander. “Your men have ruined our fun.”

 

A tall black woman and her strapping brown-haired comrade saluted Hux as he approached. “We are proud to have succeeded in the training exercise, sir,” said the woman.

 

“And I am proud to have such competent officers in my command, Lieutenant Fenthrop.” Hux smiled up at the young woman and her partner. His head was ringing; it echoed through his body with every heartbeat. “The First Order is well served by your skill and your bravery.”

 

****

 

The silence that hung over the corridors and rooms of the _Finalizer_ on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays was to be expected. Immersive Training Simulators were designed to replicate the psychological stress inherent in a combat mission, to force even the softest administrative officers into the disciplined, orderly mindset of a crew hardened by battle.

 

Tuesdays and Thursdays were fantastic times to carry out systems audits on the gun decks.

 

“And can you explain to me _why_ this protocol was breached by three different corporals on three different occasions while you were the Captain on duty?” Hux looked down at a grey-eyed man with a broken nose and a receding hairline.

 

“Sir, I'm afraid the night shift--”

 

“We're thirteen light years from the nearest sun, Captain,” said General Hux. “If you cannot adapt your men to a twenty-four hour schedule then you should not be serving on a Star Destroyer.”

 

The man looked from Hux to Tappik and Yang, who stood behind him in neat, clean dress unifoms. They followed behind Hux on audits, tablets in hand, taking notes and glaring implacably at incompetent wretches like the one they'd come across here. “Sir,” he pleaded. “I didn't have time--”

 

“You have been standing in front of me making excuses for the last three minutes, Captain,” said Hux. “Why do you have time now?” He blinked. “Why don't you have time at 0700 when you need to be making _absolutely certain_ that the coolant levls are--”

 

“General,” said Yang. “Lord Ren's messaging me.”

 

“What does he want?”

 

“Classified, sir,” Yang said. “He's in Hangar B.”

 

Hux looked up at the ceiling for the briefest of moments. “Colonel Tapikk, I'll ask you to continue this audit in my absence. See if you can't help Captain Harvick with his time management skills.”

 

“Gladly, sir.” Tapikk fixed the balding man with a thin-lipped grin that made him back up a couple of steps. It wouldn't be the first time she'd backed someone over a railing without touching them.

 

****

 

By the time Hux had gotten to Hangar B, Kylo Ren had managed to load, staff, and board his very own shuttle. A squad of stormtroopers was carrying medical supplies up the ramp while a cluster of maintenance officers began performing flight checks on the craft's systems.

 

As soon as the mask had spotted Hux, he was stalking across the hangar as fast as his lanky legs could carry him. It was funny, actually, how much smaller his cloak made him look. Underneath all that mess, he had beautiful broad shoulders and a thick, powerful chest – and yet he skulked about with his torso curled like a first year cadet with early breasts, doing his best to look like a bedraggled rat.

 

“I take it you've gotten word from Phasma,” Hux called as Kylo Ren came close enough to yell at.

 

Ren did not respond until he was only a couple of feet from Hux. “She has a name,” he said. “Lor San Tekka. He will not be easy.”

 

“Lor San Tekka,” Hux said, nodding as he looked past Kylo Ren to the troopers preparing his ship. “Oh, _yes_ , I've heard of Lor San Tekka.”

 

“Good.” Ren stared at him. “I will contact you personally when I have more news.”

 

“Thank you,” Hux replied with a brief nod.

 

The mask kept staring at him, still and silent. After a few seconds, Hux raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

 

“There is a disturbance on this ship,” said Kylo Ren.

 

“It's Tuesday.” Hux looked him up and down. “We've been--”

 

“I saw the old woman,” Ren said. “Afterward, in the corridor.”

 

“Wh--”

 

“She is weak.” The mask stayed perfectly still, though Kylo Ren's shoulders heaved from breathing. “Unfit to serve the First Order.”

 

“Tapikk has been serving the Dark Side loyally since before either of our parents _met_ ,” said Hux, a sneer on his face. “I won't have you insinuate--”

 

“There was a medical report produced on her this morning,” Lord Ren said. “After a simulated training exercise.”

 

Before Hux could respond, the mask had turned and walked back toward his shuttle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry but "There is a disturbance on this ship." / "It's Tuesday." is IMO the most Kylux line I have ever written INCLUDING THE ONE FROM CH 6


	9. Old Wounds, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for a mild homophobic slur used at the end and also there's a hell of a lot of weiner talk so maybe take this one to the break room or something once you get past the third set of asterisks 
> 
> Also FOB refers to a Forward Operating Base, or a small strategic encampment used as a comm hub by a small infantry force.

Like many of her relatives, Natalia Tarkin was mostly cheekbone. Her graying auburn hair she wore in a braid coiled at the back of her neck. Her frown lost none of its intensity over the holoscreen that flickered and hissed on her end of the transmission.

 

“We are running out of time,” she said. “It was hoped that you would be able to motivate Lord Ren to conduct himself more effectively in the service of the First Order.”

 

“I--” Hux's mouth hung open for a second. “I accept responsibility for any delay,” he said. He had tried to explain himself to a Tarkin once. It was much less painful to just let them blame you and end the transmission.

 

“General, if there _is_ a delay, you have my complete assurance,” General Tarkin said. “You _will_ accept responsibility for it.”

 

“The First order will not be disappointed, General,” said Hux. “Even as we speak, Lord Ren is bringing the map to me.”

 

“You and I have had this conversation three times previously, Hux.” Tarkin's thin nose flared at the end. “I do not wish to have it a fifth.”

 

“Understood, ma'am,” said Hux.

 

“Contact me immediately when you have the map in your possession,” said the face on the holoscreen. “And do give your mother my regards when next you speak.”

 

“She will be thrilled to hear you're thinking of her,” said Hux. “I hope we will speak again shortly.”

 

“As do I, General,” Tarkin sighed. “As. Do. I.”

 

The face on the holoscreen faded, and Hux let out a long, quiet exhale. For several seconds he stood in front of his desk, back straight and eyes wide as if Tarkin were personally standing curled over him.

 

Hux ran a hand over his face. “Time,” he said.

 

“The time is: 2224 and thirty-four seconds, Imperial Standard Time, General Hux,” said the computer.

 

He nodded. It hadn't yet been three cycles since he'd slept. “HD-7,” he snapped. “Capsule noodles, double portion.”

 

****

 

The map of Jakku glittered where Hux and Phasma had marked covert dispositions. Tapikk and Chata were muttering to each other on the other side of the gleaming projection, each of them apparently drawing completely different conclusions from the same tablet screen.

 

“And how long is it going to reconfigure that cloaking device for the radiation levels?” Hux snapped into his commlink.

 

“We can't avoid a wait while the salasanium coating decays, sir,” said Captain Davis in Engineering C24, who had never in his life answered a question without first providing an excuse. “But I expect we will--”

 

Hux jumped when his earpiece started screaming at top volume.

 

“One moment, Captain,” said Hux. “I have an emergency call.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Hux put the hangar commander on. “Yes, Colonel?” he asked.

 

“Lord Ren is requesting permission to land,” Sarvess said, concern evident in her voice. “I've initiated the procedure, but--”

 

“Thank you, Colonel,” Hux said. “Is Phasma with him?”

“Lord Ren is returning alone,” said Sarvess.

 

“Hmm. That will be all,” Hux said. “Thank you again.”

 

“You're welcome, sir,” the hangar commander said.

 

Hux could feel a quake beginning in his chest, spreading through his limbs. He flipped the commlink back to Davis.

 

“How long on the cloaking device,” he said.

 

“Well, sir, as I said--”

 

“How _long,_ Captain?” Hux snapped.

 

“Thirty hours,” said Davis.

 

“Thank you,” Hux replied. “That will be all.”

 

When Davis disconnected, Hux spent a few moments in silence listening to his heart race. He stared through the aetherial blue orb hovering above the bridge of the _Finalizer._

 

“Brathion!” he barked.

 

“Yes, sir!” The blond Lieutenant bolted up from his desk and saluted.

 

“I need another cup of coffee,” Hux said, “as soon as you can get it.”

 

****

 

“As I just _said_ , General,” Phasma said, “I am only now learning of--”

 

“Yes, you've made me aware,” Hux snapped. “I need you to get in touch with the FOB commanders immediately--”

 

“Two of my FOBs are under fire right now and a third is being reconstructed,” Phasma said. “Any report I get from them will be out of date within minutes.”

 

“We may not _have_ minutes,” Hux replied.

 

“General, Lord Ren is coming to the bridge.”

 

“Good!” Hux did not look away from the helmet on the holoscreen. “Captain, I understand that you are juggling priorities right now, but Lord Ren does not have access to the information I need from you.”

 

He did not look up when the bridge doors hissed open, either.

 

“General, can we resume this in your office?” Phasma said. “I have serious misgivings about making this report a priority when I have--”

 

“Your misgivings are not going to be eased if I cannot send you the artillery you need, Captain!” Hux ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth and took in a deep breath. “This planet's surface is an absolute _mess_ and we've already lost--”

 

“I _watched_ that FOB disappear into a sinkhole, General!”

 

“We can discuss your observations of--”

 

“He's in a _meeting_ , My Lord,” Colonel Tapikk snapped, in a voice she never used the first time she said something.

 

Hux turned around to see her hustling behind Lord Ren, tablet in hand and her lips very thin and very pale. Lord Ren was swinging his arms as he stalked across the bridge, his head bowled forward and his strides rapid with rage.

 

Hux's eyes grew wide. He opened his mouth.

 

“Colonel--”

 

But Tapikk had almost caught up to him. “My _Lord_ ,” she huffed. “When the General is _finished_ he will--”

 

Kylo Ren did not slam her back against a wall like he had Colonel Tarr. When his fingers closed, Colonel Tapikk rose vertically, her boots shaking and her eyes boggling as she struggled for breath.

 

“Lord Ren, release her.” Hux put his hands behind his back and filled his chest.

 

Tapikk was clutching her throat, kicking in vain as she rose toward the ceiling.

 

“Lord Ren!” Hux began to walk toward the mask, his heart in his throat and his feet light in his boots. “Put her _down!”_

 

Tapikk's face was turning blue. The motion of her feet was growing slower, weaker.

 

“Kylo Ren, I am giving you an order!” Hux roared as he sprinted across the gap between them. “You will release her this instant or I will--”

 

“Or what?” Ren turned to face him without releasing his grip on Colonel Tapikk. “What will you--”

 

A bolt of blinding pain shot up Hux's arm as his fist collided with the alusteel of Kylo Ren's helmet.

 

Yang screamed. Someone let out a “holy _shit”_ as Tapikk clashed to the floor with a gasp and a cry of pain.

 

“Miranda!” yelled Chata as she sprinted toward her fallen C.O. “Sergeant, we need an MC9 on the bridge _now!”_

 

Hux had only struck hard enough to knock Kylo Ren briefly off balance, and when he recovered he rounded on him.

 

“You insolent _\--”_

 

“Insolent?” Hux roared. “You call me _insolent,_ Lord Ren?” Though the mask was less than an inch from his nose, he kept his back straight and his chest tight. One hand was clenched into a tight fist; the other hung uselessly from his side. “You return from the planet with _no advance notice_ to me _or_ to Phasma. You offer no explanation for your arrival. You interrupt an _urgent_ communication with--”

 

“My knights were ambushed,” Lord Ren said. “By resistance fighters.” His shoulders were heaving. Hux could see the gleam of blood on his right shoulder. “My ship has been fitted with tracking devices.”

 

“And you're telling me this _now_ ,” Hux hissed.

 

“We need to move this ship,” said Kylo Ren. “If you are finished.”

 

“If I am--” Hux blinked up at Ren, his mouth gaping. The room's silence was only barely interrupted by the arrival of the medical droid.

 

“Over here,” Chata said, her voice barely above a whisper.

 

Shutting his mouth and turning away from Kylo Ren had never been so excruciating. He sucked a deep breath in through his nose, shut his eyes as he walked back to the forward window of the _Finalizer_. “Lieutenant Brathion,” he said, “Alert the hyperdrive commanders – we need to initiate Tactical Protocol 84.”

 

****

 

Whatever else he might be, Hux was _certainly_ not a homosexual. It said nothing of his character that he happened to be in his office when a homosexual came to call. It was pure happenstance that a homosexual asked to see how his shattered hand was responding to the osteoplast boost from the medical droid. Hux had nothing to do with said homosexual's decision to put two of his fingers in his perplexing, gentle mouth, to dart his tongue between them in a strangely arousing manner until Hux could no longer pretend to keep his breath steady or conceal his cock's struggle against his breeches.

 

He was only, as was recommended by the First Order Senior Officer's Handbook, relaxing in his quarters during a brief lull in his work, with his back arched and breath coming in jagged little gasps. Kylo Ren was the one with another man's cock jammed down his throat, grunting like some greedy little animal while he clasped at Hux's jacket and ran his tongue up and down his shaft.

 

That was fairly undeniable homosexual behavior, and Hux would have no part in it. There was, however, nothing inherently homosexual in holding a man by his hair – in fact, it was often necessary in combat and in emergency--

 

Hux's train of thought derailed abruptly as a pulse of ecstasy began in his cock and spread through his entire body. His hips thrashed against Kylo Ren's hands.

 

He wasn't sure exactly when Ren stood. The taller man loomed over him, his brows sunk over his eyes and his mouth turned downward.

 

“You should sleep,” he said to Hux.

 

It was several seconds before Hux had gathered his wits enough to reply. “I have no time to sleep,” he said. “Captain Phasma could report in at any--”

 

“Your staff will notice,” said Ren, “if you become any more unstable.”

 

“Unstable,” said Hux. “We're back to _unstable--”_

 

“You struck your co-commander,” said Lord Ren. “In front of your Senior Staff.” He took a deep breath, glanced to the side for a moment. “Because of your personal feelings,” he continued. “About the old woman.”

 

“Tapikk is a respected collea--"

 

"She treats you like a child," said Kylo Ren. "Her presence makes you weak."

 

For the eighth or ninth time this cycle, Hux had no response for Kylo Ren other than the silent gaping of his jaws. He blinked. He remembered a slide she'd shown him once - a freckled Academy graduate of nineteen, shaved head starting to show bright orange again, waving ecstatically at her in front of his TIE Fighter. Kessel - Kessel was where her son had been taken from her, just like every other man who'd wandered into her life.

 

A short, quiet sigh escaped Hux's throat as he shook his head, staring down at the pale flesh of his bare thighs.

 

“Perhaps you're correct,” he said to his legs. “I should—I should try to sleep.”


	10. Cleaning Up

Colonel Tapikk's reassignment was mourned silently by the remaining bridge officers, in furtive glances at Colonel Jask and his staff as they accustomed themselves to being on the bridge. He was a stocky, cheerful man getting into his fifties, a grasper from Hux's homeworld who had been among the first to apply for a posting on Starkiller Base.

 

Jask was high-strung and made no attempt to hide it as he flittered between workstations bouncing like an astromech droid. He laughed too loudly, too often, and at too many things. Human resources reported three minor complaints against him in the past year; they alleged that he was bedding one of his Captains, a girl half his age who most certainly not the wife at home he spoke so highly of.

 

Hux had a feeling that item was going to come in handy well before Skywalker was captured.

 

“We will begin the approach at 1100 Imperial,” he was explaining to the group of officers assembled around the map of Jakku. “This is about 0200 or 0300, local time. Captain Phasma and her Command Squad will accompany Lord Ren on his shuttle. “At 1130, air support will arrive to complete the purge of Jungu-Niaki. We anticipate that this will give the troop transports fifteen to twenty-five minutes to evade Resistance sensors.”

 

Hux looked to Captain Phasma and raised his eyebrows as he stepped back from the map.

 

“We have been experiencing severe particulate contamination in Jakku's atmosphere,” drawled the Stormtrooper Commander as she strode up to the map, her arms crossed and her rifle slung across her back. “Our timely approach depends on diligent maintenance of the Triligore Fields and immediate response to any interruption— _yes, Colonel._ ”

 

At 'particulate contamination,' Jask's eyebrows had shot up and he'd begun to bounce from one foot to the other. He froze when Phasma acknowledged him, tapped his fingers on his tablet a couple of times. “Ah, so—when you say particulate conta--”

 

“Our sensors have consistently been picking up ranges in the mid to high eighties, mostly composed of clay with radiation levels in the low forties,” Phasma said. “Does that answer your question?”

 

“Yes, Captain,” said Jask, settling back into his boots.

 

“Individually,” Phasma continued, “Dameron and Tekka are expert escape artists. If they have reunited, we will have to strike almost instantly if we are to have any hope of capturing them and obtaining the map to Skywalker.”

 

Colonel Jask was starting to bounce again.

 

Phasma turned to face him.

 

Colonel Jask stopped bouncing.

 

“By 1145, we expect to have cleared the objective,” said Phasma. “And by 1230, we expect to have landed on the _Finalizer_ , where General Hux will have the hyperdrive crews on standby.” She stepped back from the globe.

 

Hux stepped forward again. “We will jump into hyperspace immediately after--”

 

The bridge doors hissed open.

 

Every officer on the _Finalizer_ had seen Kylo Ren stalking by at one point or another. It was immediately obvious which ones on the bridge had never shared a workspace with him.

 

He scanned the room as he strode through it, silent and slouched. His neck swiveled as he passed Phasma, then again as he passed Hux. He made no sound and spoke no words as he walked to the forward window. He simply stood there, bow-legged and stoop-shouldered, mouth breathing out at the unfeeling stars.

 

Hux ran his tongue along his teeth, turned his eyes back to the map of Jakku. “The timing of our hyperspace jump,” he said as he scanned the nervous faces of the officers around him, “ _must_ be impeccable.”

 

****

 

“That's the probem with these examinations.” Phasma leaned over the barbell, cast a skeptical, narrow-eyed gaze over the crowd in the gymnasium. “They never fucking know what's going on in their heads – and it's not reasonable to expect it of some of them. Especially not this one.”

 

“We have drugs on this ship that can strip the capacity for fear entirely from a man,” Hux replied. They were speaking in low murmurs, though the officers in the gymnasium gave them plenty of room. “Give some to your coward and don't worry yourself with what he knows.”

 

“He'll get his drugs,” Phasma said. “They have them on some shit up in reprogramming that'd make you speak Wookiee.” She swung back under the bar, snapped her big square head back and forth a couple of times. “Number four.”

 

Hux got behind her and minded the bar like a good partner, but he wasn't certain how much he was going to accomplish if Phasma dropped four hundred fifty pounds on him. She didn't just grunt when she was doing leg work – she _yelled_ , a wordless holler that echoed off the gymnasium walls and made Hux's ears turn red just from the indignity of it. Her last squat in the set was a slow, quaking movement; halfway up, the bar tipped alarmingly, but all four fifty made it back into the pegs without an ounce of effort on Hux's part.

 

Phasma panted for a few seconds with her hands on her scarred-up knees, staring to one side and blinking hard. She had to take about a minute to recover from this weight – had to sit around and kill time with Hux while she regained the feeling in her legs. When she gathered her wits, she shook her head and resumed leaning on the bar while she glared at the morning hustle around her.

 

“I understand why we do it this way,” Phasma said. “I promise, General, I do.”

 

“You'll become used to my troops in good time,” Hux replied. “They have been proven _repeatedly_ to be no different psychologically than battle-seasoned troops--”

 

“It's not about the psychology,” said Phasma. “They _know_ it's a simulation--”

 

“Do they?” Hux looked behind him. “Did I ever mention to you, Captain, how Colonel Tapikk came to earn Kylo Ren's animosity?”

 

“She had a panic attack on one of your holo-runs and spent the morning throwing up in the infirmary,” Phasma replied. Everyone on this Star Destroyer knows Tapikk went bug-crazy years ago.” The tall blonde looked up at the ceiling for a moment, rolled her head around a little, looked back at Hux. “Ren was bound to take advantage of it sooner or later – and he does have a point.”

 

Hux's jaw hung open. “You--”

 

“General, I know she was a sweet and very competent woman,” said Phasma. “But I have seen my share of old battle-axes snap in combat in my day, and it's not an experience I'd wish on anyone in the First Order.”

 

Hux nodded, looked at the floor for a moment.

 

“Speaking of old battle axes,” said Phasma, “does Tarkin know about the droid situation?”

 

He ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth.

 

Phasma swung back under the bar. “All right,” she said as she wrapped her big chalky hands around it. “Let's get on set five, then.”

 

 

****

 

The apartment's door slid open with the familiar hiss of hydraulics and oiled alusteel grooves. Captain Agritt stood inside, her cap on straight and her wet hair hurriedly tied back beneath her greatcoat.

 

“Sir, you came to see me, sir,” she said, saluting Hux with her chest puffed out and her heels snapped together. “I aplogize for making you wait, sir!” Her wide-set brown eyes were round with terror, and her mouth was a thin line in her face.

 

Hux smiled at the slender woman as he pulled the bottle of wine from his greatcoat and handed it to her. “From the bridge, Captain,” he said. “To gun deck B-28.”

 

Agritt gasped as she took the bottle from him, bent her knees and grinned up at Hux. “Thank you, sir!” said the one damned officer on the _Finalizer_ who'd done her job when the pilot escaped with a treasonous stormtrooper. “I never--”

 

“You never shirked your duty or failed to perform under extraordinary pressure,” Hux said. “A decent bottle is the least thanks we can give you for helping the First Order succeed in its most critical task yet.”

 

“Oh, my—thank you! Thank you, sir!” Agritt's face was flushing. “Again, I'm sorry for--”

 

“We all have to shower sometimes,” said Hux. “Even heroes of the First Order.”

 

“Sir, I was just--”

 

“Enjoy the wine, Captain,” said Hux. He saluted. “Good evening to you.”

 

“Thank you sir!” Agritt called after him as he walked on back toward his own quarters.

 

Someone had to be in a good mood this evening, and it wasn't going to be anybody on senior staff.

 

He'd composed the message to Colonel Tapikk before he'd even gotten back into his office. He opened his holoface, the keyboard extension, nodded to his hospitality droid.

 

“HD7,” he said. “Same request as last.”

 

“You have four hundred and eighty nine e-mails since your last login,” said the holoface.

 

“Silent,” Hux replied.

 

He began typing as HD7 fussed with the food unit. _Col. Tapikk:_ he typed. _Please advise of satisfaction with current assignment._ His fingers hovered over the letters projected onto his desk. _At any time if there is anything I can do for you, you need only ask. Best of luck in your new assignment, and as I said before please feel free to use me as a reference for any future opportunities. Best, Gen. Hux._

 

He sat back as his hospitality droid came back with his capsule noodles and coffee. If only all of Kylo Ren's messes could be cleaned up this easily. “Filter messages by rank of sender,” he said. “Flag all incoming messages from Colonel Jask and Colonel--”

 

“General Hux,” said the monitor, right on time. “You have a visitor.”

 

“Open front door,” Hux said as he scrolled through – why were there messages from Jask with FWD: FWD: FWD: in the title?

 

Hux took a long drink of his coffee as the mask came striding into his office, standing awfully proud and tall for someone who still didn't have a map to Luke Skywalker.

 

“Sit down,” Hux said, motioning to one of the chairs that sat around an extra table that had seen much more of Hux's bare chest than his paperwork. “Do make yourself at home.”

 

An icy smile began to play at his lips as he opened the interface for holo-calls. “Have you had occasion to meet General Tarkin?” he asked.

 

“No.” Kylo Ren wasn't going to take off his mask for this. So much for his madman act.

 

“You're in for a treat,” Hux replied. “She really is a _charming_ woman.”

 

“Confirm identity, phase one.”

 

Hux leaned briefly in for his retinal scan, then turned back to Ren while it processed. “And tonight, My Lord,” he said, the smile on his face growing wider, “we have some _fascinating_ subjects to discuss with her.”


	11. Going to Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets pretty damn NSFW under the asterisks so there's that

Hux had absolutely no reason to meet Colonel Landa in his office. No officer on the _Finalizer_ had a reason to meet with the Intelligence Operations Commander in his office.

 

But Colonel Landa had learned, at some point while he was careening around the galaxy on Brendol Hux's senior staff, that if you put a little effort into decorating and stocking your office, you would never have to walk to the bridge in your dress boots again.

 

His collection of old recordings (and definitely not his perilously handsome face, or his lean, athletic figure that he carried with such elegance, or the electric current of wit that ran sparkling through everything he said) was Hux's weakness. Landa had been collecting the galaxy's most obscure, rare, and experimental musical works since he'd been at the Academy. Since Hux had been ten or eleven, Landa was almost singularly responsible for anything he knew about music that hadn't been produced by an Imperial Orchestra.

 

Today's selection was Lehki ballads from their late classical period – quiet, delicate tunes that were apparently very influential in early Imperial dance music. Landa hummed along as he waited for the holoface to verify his fingerprints.

 

“Identity verified,” said the computer. “Welcome to your files, Colonel Landa.”

 

“Thank you,” he replied, glancing down and smiling politely as if his desk could see him. His hair, which had been starting to gray when Hux had first hidden behind his father from him, had gone completely white. He sucked his lips in as he searched his private database for the information he'd been so excited about on the holocall.

 

“Ah, _yes_ ,” Landa said, that brilliant grin spreading across his jaws. He wiggled in his seat as he turned the holoface around so Hux could see what was making Landa so giddy.

 

As soon as he parsed the term “BB Unit” on his screen, Hux's eyes grew wide. His breath stalled in his lungs as he read the transmission from whatever shadowy informant had woken Landa at 0125 with the worst news the First Order had received in months.

 

“Oh--”

 

Hux felt the blood drain from his face as he read the transmission. He had to read the last sentence to himself two, three times before he looked at Landa again.

 

“This has to be a joke,” he said.

 

“Even the most eccentric orbits,” said Landa, “must eventually bring a planet to the same point.” He pulled the cork out of a decanter that sat on his desk, picked two small glasses from the tray beside it.

 

“Does he know of Ren's involvement, then?” He had to read that last sentence a couple additional times, just to make sure. _Positive ID was made on Han Solo and the Wookiee known as Chewbacca._

 

“He almost certainly does,” Colonel Landa replied. He was still smiling, humming along to the Lekhi ballad as he poured a small dram of brandy for himself and for Hux.

 

“Colonel, is there something you aren't telling me about this?” Hux blinked at the older man, leaned forward in his chair.

 

“I have told you everything I know,” Landa replied. He set a coaster down in front of Hux, set a glass of brandy down on top of it. “The Resistance has recovered the BB unit,” he said. “We have nearly missed our chance to find Skywalker.” His smile widened as he locked his eyes on Hux's. “And once again, General, Kylo Ren has failed to bring Lord Snoke the prize he was assigned to win.”

 

Hux let out a sigh as he took the glass of brandy and sat back in his chair. He said nothing to Landa, simply blinked and inclined his head, ready to listen.

 

“When I was serving with your father,” Colonel Landa said, relaxing in his own seat and swirling his brandy casually in one hand, “I was given a certain nickname.”

 

“The Hunter,” Hux replied.

 

“Yes, they called me the Hunter,” said Landa, “It began as an attempt at an insult, among the rebels—but they were correct.” He sipped his brandy, smiled up at the ceiling. “I was sent to track animals, General, and tracking animals is one of my strongest talents.”

 

“Animals such as Wookiees,” said Hux.

 

Landa gave him that charming grin, wiggled in his seat a moment. “Do you know what a hunter does, General, when he is pursuing quarry that is too fast to catch?”

 

“He starts shooting, I believe,” Hux replied.

 

Landa shook his head, set his brandy down on the drinks tray. “When an animal is cornered,” he said quietly, in his lilting Corellian accent, “he will do all kinds of irrational things in an attempt to flee – and _that_ , General, is when you spring your trap and put him at your mercy.” He held up one finger, inclined his head to Hux.

 

Hux nodded. “They call it 'going to ground,' do they not?”

 

Landa leaned back in his chair and smiled.

 

Hux frowned. “And how do you suggest cornering Han Solo?” he asked. “The man's barely welcome aboard his own ship--”

 

“Han Solo is a wide roaming man, I will admit,” Landa said. “He is what they call…a citizen of the Republic.”

 

He stretched back in his seat, smiling patiently as his gleaming brown eyes bored into Hux's.

 

It took only a moment for the gears in Hux's mind to shift into their proper position. When he realized what Landa wasn't saying out loud, his eyes grew wide and his elbows came off the arms of his chair. A quiet laugh escaped from his chest. Yes, he thought. _Yes._

 

“You are a true man of the Empire,” Hux said to Colonel Landa, standing up and setting his brandy down on the coaster. “Does General Tarkin know of this?”

 

“I have not yet informed the General,” Landa said. He arched his brows at Hux. “I work under your command, after all.”

 

“Send her a brief message about this,” Hux replied. “No need to go into detail about our conversation here, of course.”

 

“She is a _very_ busy woman,” Landa said as he picked his drink up again.

 

“And I will personally make sure that this information is distributed along the proper channels on the _Finalizer_ ,” Hux replied. “You can busy yourself with more pressing matters.”

 

Landa nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

 

“Thank _you_ , Colonel,” Hux replied. “Your service to the First Order is extraordinarily appreciated.”

 

****

 

He didn't know exactly what kept him from this until now.

 

It was starting to seem like there was a kind of tactics to the way they were fucking: a pair of rival stratagems that clashed in the darkness, armed with the pinch of teeth and the caress of a tongue and the perverse, needy ecstasy of being held down and violated.

 

Some of his hesitation, Hux attributed to his own depravity and Ren's natural gifts and talents. Part of it was his uncertainty as to how the man would respond to the situation.

 

Mostly, there was no going back from this. He was not tolerating Kylo Ren's affections, passively enduring these encounters in the name of preserving peace aboard his ship. He could not pass this off to himself as a trade, a negotiation that had gone very wrong.

 

This – his hands curled tight around Ren's wrists, his teeth leaving purple bruises on his collarbone, his face buried in the perplexing man's soft black hair – this was a conquest. Hux finally had Kylo Ren where he wanted him, and he was going to take whatever he wanted.

 

And what he wanted, apparently, was to fuck another man until both of them collapsed in a sticky, panting heap on his bed.

 

There was a void afterward, a blessed absence of thought or feeling that overcame Hux's mind like a drug while he stared at the ceiling. He was convinced it was why people were still having sex after all these centuries of technological mastery.

 

He looked down when a head of thick black hair landed on his chest. Ren was not looking at him; his body was curled, goose-fleshed now that he was lying still.

 

“Lord Snoke contacted me today,” he said to Hux's stomach.

 

Hux smiled at the ceiling. “Did he?” he said.

 

“He wants us to return to Starkiller Base,” Ren said. “As soon as possible.”

 

Hux sighed, but the smile remained on his face. “Oh, yes,” he said, one hand drifting up to ruffle Ren's hair. “I'm sure he does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The answer is always Taranti-YES ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  
> 2\. "New Americana" by Halsey is making me scream rwt this fic so I mean there's also that


	12. The Speech

Hux drew in a deep breath, tightened his entire body and stuck his jaw forward. “This fierce machine which we have built,” he roared, “will bring an _end_ to the Senate--”

 

“Wrong,” Phasma said. She was sitting on his sofa in her long tights, her feet bare and her legs stretched out. Her armor was laid out on the table in his office; on her stomach she rested some disgusting caf syrup she'd developed a taste for at her last assignment. “This fierce machine which we have built--”

 

“On which we stand,” Hux said alongside her. He nodded, pacing across the room with his hands held behind his back. “This fierce machine which we have built,” he said, “on which we stand, will bring an end to the Senate, their cherished fleet. This fierce machine which we have built, on which we stand, will bring an end to the Senate, their cherished fleet. This fierce machine--”

 

“Hold on, my commlink's going off.” She tapped her wrist. “Phasma.”

 

“Captain, you're needed in Equipment Bay 7 for a disciplinary infraction,” said a voice on the speaker.

 

“Give me five,” she said to her wrist. “Phasma out.” She turned to Hux, met his eyes for the first time since FN-2187 had absconded with the pilot. “Looks like you'll have to go back to the droid,” she said. “There's been a disciplinary incident.” Her eyes got ever so slightly wider on the last two words.

 

“No doubt another first-time infraction,” Hux replied as his Stormtrooper Commander got up off the couch and went back to his office for her armor.

 

Phasma did not reply. Hux followed her into his office.

 

She snapped her armor back onto her powerful frame with familiar efficiency, staring at his bedroom doorway with her mouth thin and her brows furrowed.

 

“It's going to get worse,” she said.

 

“What--”

 

“The ones who haven't killed together are going to hear about what happened,” Phasma continued as she snapped her forearms on. “They're going to think they have a choice—pauldrons, if you please.”

 

The blonde woman held her big, long arms out to the side, and Hux snapped her shoulder and back pieces into place.

 

“We've been over this,” Hux said.

 

“Yes,” Phasma replied as she picked her cloak up from the chair where she'd hung it. “Yes, we have.”

 

****

 

Kylo Ren had the hospitality droid heat them a double portion of spicy cheese pockets, which he had begun eating well before they were fit for consumption. Hux pretended that he couldn't see him through his holoface, sitting back in his chair with his helmet on his lap and his boots splayed in front of him, pretending that the irradiated grease wasn't blistering his mouth as he gorged himself.

 

Ren raised one of his feet.

 

“No,” Hux said as he moved to put it on his desk.

 

Ren put his foot back down.

 

“You've had a visitor,” he said. “They moved your chair.”

 

“Phasma was here earlier.” Hux tapped out a quick reply to Colonel Landa and sent it manually. “I'm practicing my speech for the rally.”

 

“Your speech,” said Kylo Ren. “You think you'll bolster your troops' loyalty with a speech.”

 

“I think I'll bolster my troops with the most advanced and expensive combination of training and conditioning in galactic history,” said Hux, skimming through a summary of expense reports from Precinct 47. “This is for my officers.”

 

“Who will protect your officers from the next FN-2187?” Ren picked up another little pastry abomination. “If we do not season your troops soon--”

 

“If I can maintain a staff of officers who I know and trust,” Hux snapped, focusing his eyes on the spotty boy in front of him, “then anomalies like Phasma's traitor are not a problem. I had to deal with a brand-new deck staff who had _no_ acquaintance with several of the gun crews, and--”

 

“Phasma's traitor,” said Ren.

 

“I don't mean to insult her,” said Hux. “But I have hundreds of thousands of people under my command, and there is a _reason_ I was assigned a Stormtrooper Commander.”

 

“Hmm.” Ren chewed on his cheese pocket, looked off to the side.

 

****

 

He let Ren take his frustrations out on him that night, muttering little jabs in his ear while he held him hard against the bedroom wall. It was hard to take anything the man said seriously when he had such a hard time keeping his hands off Hux's cock.

 

When they were finished, Ren retreated to the lav unit, and Hux regained what he could of his dignity and cleanliness while trying not to look at his hospitality droid. He got into bed without a word. Either Ren would join him, or he would leave.

 

Tonight, he left. Hux waited, staring at the ceiling, for sleep to carry him off. After maybe fifteen, twenty minutes of listening to his own heartbeat, he rose and got into the shower.

 

When the hot water hit his shoulders, Hux could smell Kylo Ren. He scrubbed his skin like it was radioactive, but it was too late to suppress the memories: thick hair, big eyes, gentle, nervous lips.

 

The pictures (teeth grazing on his skin, a plea in the darkness, bony fingers clutching his hips) were almost out of his mind by the time he had dried himself off and parted his hair.

 

“HD7,” said Hux as he strode through his bedroom with a towel around his waist. “Coffee, sweet.”

 

 

****

 

Kylo Ren was still sulking on the _Finalizer_ for the ceremony commemorating the first charging of Starkiller Base. It was a small and highly secretive affair, attended by General Tarkin as well as all of the Level 5 Senior Staff. Everyone invited at least knew better than to inquire as to where the third part of Starkiller Base's high command had wandered off to now.

 

His absence was the only convenience Hux enjoyed during the final hours. The thrilling part of the reality – that this was happening, that his grand design was finally coming to fruition, that all of his labor and anguish and a total of twelve nights spent in an AT-AT were going to be worthwhile – was somewhat muffled under the rest of the reality.

 

The rest of the reality was a lot of unfinished construction, storms interfering with scheduled TIE Fighter drills, people asking him about the reception he had no hand in planning, and continued disappointed reports from Landa concerning the location of the droid.

 

By the time the weapon was at ninety-five percent, Hux was about ready to stick his head in it.

 

****

 

The first time Hux had gotten onstage and given a speech, he'd known there was no life for him but that of a great commander. Gone from the body was the weakness, the fear that followed him like a comet's tail as he skulked about from room to room.

 

His body was tight with rage and joy. He could feel the power of Starkiller base beneath his feet, the pride and might of his army before him.

 

“This fierce machine which you have built, upon which we stand,” Hux roared at the assembled ranks on the icy tarmac before him, “ will bring an end to the Senate, to their cherished fleet!”

 

He was shaking, as one did when was on one's fortieth hour without sleep, but he was awake. So awake. “All remaining systems will bow to the First Order,” he called to his troops. “And they will remember this as the last day of the Republic!”

 

He heard his speech, and he heard his order to fire the weapon, but he somehow felt as if the voice rising above the winds of Starkiller base was not his own.

 

But the heat that came off that ray of pure power – yes, _that_ belonged to him. The roar of the planet's vegetation disintegrating around its aperture as his magnificent weapon came to life and shook the ground beneath his feet – _that_ was his, and the lives he would take were his, and the army arrayed on the pavement before him was his.

 

He knew that Kylo Ren could not resist watching this, knew that he would be enchanted by the same hateful beauty burning Hux's eyes. He knew his Force, his jedi mind tricks, his temper tantrums could never achieve this. To achieve this, he needed Hux, and he knew it.

 

 

****

 

He hadn't even left the stage before a Level Five alert came in on his commlink.

 

“Hux.”

 

“Ah, General,” said Colonel Jask, who'd been trusted not to break anything in the command center for all of five hours by himself.

 

“Yes?” Hux snapped, suppressing a smile at the columns of green that still crossed his vision.

 

“We just, uh, well, we—all right, so we just got word in from Landa,” Jask said. “The droid is on Takodana, Kylo Ren wants to go for a ground assault to get it back, and he just took the _Finalizer_ to hyperspace.”

 

Hux could feel the chill of the wind on his face. He could hear his pulse. He was suddenly aware that every officer still on the stage had turned to stare at him with evident concern on their faces.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody who reads this chapter will regret looking up "who ate the damn pizza rolls" on google images


	13. Battle Stations

“You _what?”_ Hux rose up on his toes without thinking, a sudden breath rushing into his ribs.

 

“One of the fugitives, the girl,” said Kylo Ren. “She's force sensitive.”

 

“She's—oh, for _fuck's sake,_ Ren!” Hux shouted.

 

Overhead, a PA announcement stopped mid-word. Hux realized that the hangar bay had gone completely silent.

 

“The _force_ at issue here, My Lord!” he went on, his neck stiff and his hands clenched into fists. “This opportunity to showcase your...your _magical powers--”_

 

“She's seen the map.”

 

“And the Resistance now _has_ the map!” Hux stepped closer to Ren. “And FN-2187, and everything he knows--”

 

“I thought that was Phasma's problem,” Kylo Ren replied.

 

Hux's mouth hung open for a moment. He did not need to look around him to be aware of the eyes fixated on the two of them.

 

“He was under Phasma's command,” Hux said, his voice now low and level. “Your actions have made him the problem of every man and woman aboard this ship and base.”

 

“We have what we need,” Ren said.

 

“We need the _map,_ Ren,” Hux replied. “We need the droid that carries it! We need FN-2187 or his confirmed death, Ren!” His voice was rising again, and he realized he has made himself as tall as he could without standing on tip-toe. “We need control over our intelligence! Information you think you can glean from a jedi mind trick is not even--”

 

He had always thought that he would be the one to remain still and calm when it was his turn to have his trachea gripped in an invisible fist. But, once again, his body betrayed him to Kylo Ren. His hands flew to his neck of his own accord; he stared at the mask with his mouth gaping _stop, stop—stop, please stop--_

 

He didn't realize until he collapsed onto his knees that Ren had picked him a couple of feet off the floor.

 

The mask knelt, leaned down close to Hux's head as he gasped on the cold floor of the hangar bay.

 

“Why do you put so little trust in information I get using the Force?” He breathed in Hux's ear. “It's told me _so much_ about you.”

 

Hux's thoughts were racing ahead of him. He shut his eyes, rubbed his throat as someone yelled about a medical droid a few yards away. He wasn't paying attention. He was listening to Kylo Ren's boots marching out of the hangar.

 

****

 

Hux could not hide the rage on his face as he went before the Supreme Leader. Ren was maskless before the hologram, engaged in some petulant argument about the force ad the girl and his fucking beliefs.

 

“Where is the _droid?”_ Snoke snapped at him.

 

“Ren _believed_ it was no longer of value to us,” Hux interjected, giving Ren a look before staring up at the Supreme Leader with his best attempt at a calm expression. Did Ren believe that it was a simple matter to just start recharging Starkiller base? If he believed hard enough, would construction progress far enough that firing it twice in such a short span was a good idea?

 

As soon as Snoke had given the order, Hux left his audience chamber. Rage boiled in his throat, contracted his features as he strode back through the palatial complex toward the command center.

 

His bridge crew tensed when he entered, his back straight and his face a mask of calm. There was no surprise when he gave the order, no inane comment from Jask for once in his life.

 

The bruise had spread below his jacket collar. No doubt Ren felt Hux owed him for that favor.

 

****

 

“He worked in sanitation, General,” Phasma said, her helmet's eyes level and her rifle held close to her chest. They were not at battle stations yet, but he had too many officers who had survived too many Death Stars to underestimate the wiles of the Resistance. “It is unlikely he will have any information of use to the Resistance.”

 

“How certain are you of this?” Hux asked. “Were the FN soldiers ever in contact with soldiers from other areas of the base? Who was he stationed with on the _Finalizer_?”

 

“They're stormtroopers, not engineers,” Phasma replied. “They're not in contact with anyone wh knows about the operations of the--”

 

“I need to know who they _are_ in contact with,” Hux said, his voice barely above a whisper.

 

They were standing by the window, out of earshot of the bridge crew. It was a bad idea for him to leave the bridge until this inadvisable charging – without taking time to do geological survey of the base, without waiting for Engineering to run its analyses of the effect of cooling on a bolt aperture of this scale – was complete.

 

“They're in contact with my chain of command,” Phasma said.

 

“As far as you know,” Hux replied.

 

Phasma leaned back, barely perceptibly. “You really do think I'm responsible for FN-2187's betrayal,” she said.

 

Hux's heart sank in his chest. “I—”

 

“General, I am not going to continue this conversation here,” Phasma replied. Hux could not see whatever was going on behind her gleaming mask. That was the problem with masks, wasn't it? They just watched. They just waited. You never knew when it was coming with a mask.

 

“I understand,” he replied.

 

“Intelligence is not my responsibility,” Phasma said as quietly as she could through her voice filter. “And I—hold on.” She put her wrist to her mouthpiece. “Phasma.”

 

“We have a Code Green in the prisoner quarters,” said a voice on the commlink. “As far as we can tell, the fugitive escaped.”

 

“Thank you, Corporal,” Phasma said. “Initiate Procedure 35. Phasma out.”

 

Hux's pulse began to race as his Stormtrooper Commander marched across the bridge to the door. “Colonel Jask,” he said. “Alert all troops on base that they are to be on standby for battle.”

 

 

****

 

 

“General!” blurted Lieutenant Vathor. “Our shields just went down!”

 

“All troops to battle stations!” Hux snapped. He was pacing, holding his face perfectly still as he stared at the air in front of him.

 

He did not open his holoface when he went to his workstation, just the flat projection on his desk. Tapikk was still the third Colonel who showed up in his drop-down menu when he went to send an instant message. Landa was the fifth.

 

 _Shields down_ , he typed. Message sent. _Shields down_ , he typed, Message sent. How had a fugitive known how to do that? How would one of his _troopers_ know how to do that? They had to have tortured someone. Or someone else had betrayed the First Order.

 

Hux licked his lips and went back to pacing in front of the window. The rattle of an anti-aircraft gun in the distance heralded the beginning.

 

He thought it would help, telling them what they already knew. As he sighted the first X-wings coming through the atmosphere, he realized he was wrong.

 

Hux's body went rigid as he turned to face death or glory, whichever one Ren was going to let him have.

 

“Dispatch all squadrons,” he called to his bridge crew.

 

 

****

He was halfway to the palatial complex when he heard her voice, ragged and frantic above the rumble of the ground beneath them.

 

“General!” Tapikk shrieked. “General Hux!”

 

He did not slow down, so she caught up with him, her eyes wide and her face bleeding from a cut on her cheekbone.

 

“I have to get to Snoke,” Hux said. “We can't find Ren!”

 

“He's gone, General!” Tapikk said. “General, he's dead--”

 

“I can't abandon the base without permission!” Hux said. “None of you can!”

 

“He knows it's too late!”

 

“It is my _duty_ , Colonel!” Hux snapped, stopping for a moment to glare at her. “And if I am to die wearing this uniform, then I will die performing the duties that come with it.”

 

Rage seized Tapikk's face as she opened her mouth, but then her face grew slack. She shook her head, stepped close to place a thin hand on Hux's shoulder and look him in the eyes.

 

“We don't have a choice about dying in this uniform, sir,” she said to him in a calm, level voice he could barely hear. “Meet me out here when you're done. I've got a shuttle on the way, make the jump a long time before the _Finalizer_ does.”

 

“The jump?” Hux blinked. “Where--”

 

“The First Order has friends in all kinds of places, General!” Tapikk called as she ran off to rejoin her staff. “Just meet me back in this one, you hear?”

 

Hux was already sprinting on toward the palace, but he heard. He definitely heard.


	14. Escape

“You know, he ordered me to stay and fight.” She had joined him in his journey up the corridor and down again, brought him a cup of coffee that carried the taste of liquor in it. “He wasn't in my CoC, but he got in my face when I was getting my staff out and told me that I was staying.”

 

This would be Tapikk's first husband, as Hux recalled. The one who had perished on the first Death Star.

 

She took a drink of her coffee, glanced at the sealed doors of the shuttle's med bay. “He thought I was so scared of him,” she said. “Scared of his temper, scared of his jealous fits, scared of the pull he had with Tarkin's boys.” She wrinkled her upper lip, shook her head.

 

“I imagine he was wrong,” Hux said.

 

“Oh, no, he was right,” said Tapikk. “It's why I stayed with him, General – he scared me, and sometimes I liked that abut him, and sometimes...” She took another drink of her coffee.

 

They walked in silence up the corridor, and they walked back down again. Hux could still feel the sting of the cold on his nose, could still hear the planet's surface groaning as its core destablized.

 

“You didn't take him with you,” he said.

 

“No.” Tapikk shook her head. “Some nights, you know, I tell myself he got himself in a TIE fighter, took up someplace he didn't have to shine his boots or fill out his patrol logs.”

 

“Mm.” Hux took a long drink of his own coffee. He wondered how much rum had gone into it, though he trusted that Tapikk had poured in enough.

 

“Most nights, though,” she went on, “I just hope he boiled out in space with his eyeballs frying and his lungs coming out his mouth.”

 

She was staring straight ahead, clutching her mug in both hands with her jaw tight and heavy circles under her eyes.

 

Hux did not have anything to say to that. He drank his coffee, and she drank hers, and they paced up and down the corridor until the med bay doors hissed open.

 

A droid rolled out. “The patient is stable,” it said.

 

Hux turned to remark that he'd managed not to _completely_ fuck the First Order, but Tapikk had already gone back down toward the bridge.

 

****

 

Major Yang moved quietly out of the co-pilot's seat so Hux could sit beside Tapikk. A bottle of rum and a mug sat on the console in front of her. An old opera was playing quietly on her computer.

 

“How is he?” she said, staring out the cockpit window.

 

Hux reached for the rum, looked around for a glass. He shrugged, took a fortifying gulp from the bottle. “He was wounded in the side – Wookiee bowcaster is the preliminary report,” he said. “When the fugitive escaped from him, he pursued her. There appears to have been a confrontation – he has a lightsaber wound.”

 

“Bowcaster's a nasty one, though,” Tapikk said.

 

Hux nodded. He raised the bottle to his lips again. “He—he compressed the wound on his own,” he said. “He removed his socks, stuffed them beneath his belt.”

 

Tapikk stared over at him. Hux met her eyes, stared back in silence for a few moments.

 

She nodded, picked up her mug from the console. “Socks, huh?” she said.

 

“Mm.” Hux took another sip of rum, leaned back in the pilot's seat.

 

“That's showing a lot of common sense for Kylo Ren, sir,” Tappik said.

 

 

****

 

Even a Sith took a few cycles to completely recover from a wound like that. Kylo Ren was still in an induced coma when the twelve of them landed on Ganida IV. It was a small green planet, more plains than forest on most of its continents. A small fleet of First Order craft was already lined up in the wide field where Tapikk was landing – mostly TIE fighters and a few shuttles like the one Tapikk had taken from the ruin of Starkiller Base.

 

As Yang commenced the procedure for unloading, Tapikk hefted her duffel bag onto her back and saluted him.

 

“I'll report back personally,” she said. “I appreciate your patience.”

 

“I understand the need for subtlety where my presence is concerned,” Hux replied. He knew – they all knew – that not every band of fleeing Imperials was going to be happy to see their commander or Kylo Ren. Additionally, Hux suspected that Sovi Ganido and Miranda Tapikk might not have parted on the best of terms.

 

“Thank you, sir,” Tapikk said. “Just buzz us if you need anything.”

 

To the north of their landing field was a city constructed of derelict spacecraft, where and old friend and/or lover of Tapikk's allegedly ran things in a manner that was vaguely friendly to the First Order. Hux wished he were more reassured by the gathering of his ships – they were still his ships – gathered nearby.

 

Tapikk left him with a small guard outside the ship. Nobody disturbed him when he went to check up on Kylo Ren in the med bay.

 

The softness of his lanky, powerful body was especially disturbing when it was marred with freshly regenerated skin, still slick and raw and requiring hourly applications of ointment. With his lips hanging open and his eyelids gently shut, he looked incapable of any of the wrongs he'd done in the time Hux had known him.

 

There was nothing he could do for the man. He could only wait, trust in technology that could bring people back from much worse wounds than Kylo Ren. It was still somehow satisfying to shuffle about his bedside every hour or so, make sure everything was still beeping rhythmically and humming like it was supposed to. It made him feel like he had something to do, made him feel like he was still useful to the First Order.

 

Although perhaps a sense of duty was not what motivated Hux, one evening, to take one of Ren's hands in his as if to confirm that his flesh was still warm to the touch, to grasp it for a few moments as he stared down at the creature whose company he was beginning to long for in his cot.

 

“Wake up,” he muttered, shaking his head as he set Ren's hand down. “I'm getting bored.”

 

****

 

When Ren did wake up, he alerted Hux with the crash of steel from the back of the shuttle. Hux picked up one of the wine bottles Tapikk had sent back and took a long, slow drink of the acrid swill inside.

 

“Where are we?” he demanded as he stormed into the cockpit.

 

“Ganida IV,” Hux replied, putting the bottle down and looking down at the crossword game he was playing with Yang on his tablet. Tapikk had sent him back some fatigue pants and a few undershirts, which were more than welcome in this planet's muggy heat. “We can't leave the ship,” he said, writing _wampa_ across the grid on his lap. “We landed here to resupply and give you some time to heal from your injuries.”

 

“What--”

 

“The planet began to destabilize,” Hux said. “Supreme Leader Snoke directed me to bring you to him to complete your training.” He turned his head toward the man behind him.

 

If that had any particular significance to Kylo Ren, it did not show on his face. He was staring at Hux, his big shoulders stooped, his bovine eyes scanning the surroundings with something that looked very much like apprehension.

 

He furrowed his brows at Hux. He blinked.

 

Hux took a drink of his wine. “Socks,” he said, one corner of his mouth twitching upward as he tapped his side with his free hand.

 

“You came back for me,” he said.

 

“I had my orders,” Hux replied. He put his tablet on the console and stood up. Nobody saw him walk toward Kylo Ren with a bottle of wine in his hand. Nobody saw him grasp the taller man by the back of his head, pull him close and kiss him full on the mouth.

 

Ren's body froze at first, but then he clasped Hux by his shoulders, pressing back with his bare chest. When he pulled back, he was flushed; he darted his eyes away from Hux's.

 

“It's probably a bad idea to drink,” Hux said, handing him the bottle of wine. “But Colonel Tapikk, who rescued us when nobody _else_ would, expects to be held up in the spaceport for a few days yet.” He managed a genuine smile up at Kylo Ren. “I'll trust your judgement,” he said.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been so much fun to write, but I'm not sure if I want to take it any further without knowing what happens in Episode 8! Thank you all so much for reading this fanfiction of mine; your comments have been so encouraging and delightful to read, and I'm glad you have enjoyed watching me put my smol awful space sons through the wringer. Keep an eye out for a shorter Phasma-related companion to this - I have my own little idea for how our favorite space bro escapes the ruin of Starkiller Base.


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